Chapter One

http://www.amazon.com/Remote-Control-Chris-McGrath-ebook/dp/B00LLTBVY8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409702216&sr=1-1&keywords=chris+mcgrath

Remote Control

 

Chapter 1

In navigating the complex shoals of the odyssey and oddities of our lives,

We must be permitted to take some things for granted,

Else invite chaos, sheltering only on the leeward side of sanity. 

 

Sean McKenna was a living testament to this philosophy.  He sat at the sidewalk café in a mild mid-morning stupor, wondering if life’s rich pageant would favor him today with yet another car bombing.  Such was the atmosphere of modern Jerusalem, the cradle of so many religions that spoke of peace and waged it violently every day.  One day they might all kill each other and leave disenfranchised philosophers like him in peace.

Sean was in his late fifties, and appeared to be in great shape.  He drank way too much and abused his gift of athleticism daily.  He stood just over six feet tall with blonde/brown hair turning into a champagne shade of grey.  His bright blue eyes were startling and had arrested the attention of many a fair maid.  He gave off the aura of command and authority and people in general were attracted to his charismatic presence.

It was early June in Jerusalem, and Sean had seen the old city through its worst weather.  It was humid when he landed here in January.  Not the oppressive humidity of a New England summer, but the clammy, cool humidity that chilled the bone.  Some days opened with rain and closed still raining harder than ever.  He longed for that humidity now as the wind had shifted direction, bringing the dreaded Sharav into the mountains for an unusual visit that had clouded visibility and made him miserable.  The Khamsin wind, more destructive than the infamous Santa Anas of southern California, from the Arabian desert had died down this morning leaving only a few entertaining zephyrs punctuating a mild breeze that raked the streets of debris.

Sean tried to ease back in his rigid sidewalk café style chair and let the unusually warm dry air sooth him.  It was not that early but the city seemed slow to wake this morning, and while the breeze was soft on his face, it carried the variegated fragrances of a city whose roots and sewer systems were steeped in antiquity.  The café was on a corner of a usually busy intersection very near the old city.  Jerusalem is perched in the high desert, an ancient stronghold at the juncture of caravan trade routes.  This morning’s warmth accentuated the pungent fragrances so there were fewer outdoor diners than usual. 

He felt his stomach roiling its on-going lament for his nearly exclusive liquid diet, as he took another sip of his double espresso.  Faith would be here soon and he should try to look somewhat less depressing.  It wouldn’t do to have her think that he took her for granted.

It was a habit formed early and nurtured via repetition.  He took his parents for granted.  He left home, joined the army, went to war, lost the peace, his virginity, his first love, and all hope and idealism in Vietnam.  Then both of his parents died on him.  Before he ever had the chance to decide whether he wanted to go home, home was taken away.  Not that they had ever given him the love he needed as a child.  It was just the only love he had ever known.  He was informed of a modest inheritance and the Red Cross showed up to get him to his parent’s funeral.  He declined their offer, ordered no-ceremony, pine box burials without headstones in the cheapest cemetery offered, and went on with his life of coping with his other losses.  Now he was wasting nicely, hidden away in a little corner of Jerusalem, pretending to write his second novel, and hoping it wouldn’t be so successful that it might intrude on his obscurity.

He enjoyed obscurity.  He liked protecting his own, while probing that of others.  He had become a linguist and a cryptographer during his days in Vietnam.  It was a convenient stopover on his road to oblivion.  There were plenty of willing women and while the government repeatedly put him in harm’s way, there always seemed to be a way to turn the tables and make a profit.  At first he justified his profiteering, pointing out to no one in particular that what the government was doing through him was immoral and internationally illegal.  Therefore, why should he even consider holding himself to a higher standard than the land of the free and home of the brave?  Later, he realized that in terms of morality, the standards held by both of them were anything but astronomical.  Given the moral code of the US military and industrial alliance of the day, he was setting his own moral compass just below sewer level.

He returned home to the United States briefly following the embarrassing embassy exit his government made to end their participation in the continuing oppression of the people of Vietnam in the name of democracy.  After declining the government’s kind offer to make him a permanent farm hand at Langley, Virginia, he wrote a book detailing his various positions in the intelligence community, filling in embarrassing details of drug running to fund the illicit activities of Air America, completely compromising his top-secret crypto code-word, special intelligence security clearance.  His royalties from the impressive sales were still accumulating more rapidly than he could withdraw them from his Cayman bank, and he had never had to touch the considerable amount on deposit in Zurich as a result of his privateering in and around Southeast Asia.

He loved the term privateer.  It was invented by a previous government bent on bending international laws.  The English used it to describe the pirates of the Caribbean who were loyal to, and funded by, the English crown and dedicated to raiding Spanish merchant ships heavily laden with gold stolen from the American indigents.  Much of the gold found its way back to the British crown, without suffering the risk of war with Spain.

While he had no intention of ever returning to the United States, he never expected to have spent so much time in the Holy Land.  He had come here out of curiosity, intending to do some mild investigation into the perpetual conflicts in the area.  Conflict always presented opportunity to the true entrepreneur.  The plan was to make a few contacts with the local MOSSAD, move on to do some tourist travel through Europe and settle down to the good life on a private Caribbean Island near his bank on Grand Cayman where he could orchestrate his exploitation of the Palestinian plight from a more objective distance.  Dreams of a life of sex and debauchery were dancing in his head when he bumped into Faith Foley, an archaeologist in Jerusalem on a dig.  She was almost 15 years younger than he, and obviously attracted to him, so somehow he just never got around to actually leaving.  When they were together, time stood still in its irrelevance.  Each time they were apart, he convinced himself that the last thing Faith needed was a burned out relic like him, and he resolved to put her out of her misery and get on with his insignificant but comfortable life.  He kept dancing nearer the Faith-flame, scorched so many times you would think there was a new genus of moth called the phoenix.  Or maybe Faith was the moth and in her determined recklessness she just kept plunging deeper into the flaming wreckage of his life.

It was this very life that he was mulling when his cell phone startled him back to awareness.  He hated phones and couldn’t understand why he kept charging this little annoyance, only to have it trigger new waves of pain within the headache that stormed within his throbbing cranium.  He reached for the ring-toned land mine, and inexplicably brightened when he saw Faith’s name on the caller ID.  He pressed the send key, and put on his most charming persona.

“Good morning, love.  I missed you last night.  Sorry I couldn’t make the seminar, but writers have to write when the spirit moves them…”

It was amazing how easily the lies just peeled off his tongue without his even having to think about them.  Anyone watching him would think the nearly dead man at the table had received a much needed transfusion of life’s blood through the phone.  This transformation was quickly followed by yet another as Sean’s face clouded into confusion.

The voice on the phone was conspiratorially low and alive with anxiety.  “Sean, please listen.  There’s something I need you to do right away.  I sent a man to see you.  He’s a digger in one of the tunnels my team has been excavating and he has told me a most amazing story.  I can’t tell you over the phone, but something has happened and he is suddenly afraid for his life… not just a little afraid, cold sweat afraid so he can’t even hold the picks and brushes for excavation without shaking the relics to ruin…”

“Hold it, hold it…  You’re talking too fast…”

“JUST LISTEN!” the disembodied Faith-phone-thing screamed in his ear, driving his headache to Richter scale levels of pain.  “I really think he is in danger.  Look for him.  He will be wearing a light colored suit with a red tie and a brown fez.  He is…”

The phone crackled.  His was a satellite phone, but hers was cellular and she must be moving.

“You’re breaking up, Faith.  Can’t we talk about this when you get here?” 

Silence, followed by a click-clack sound like someone was fingering an old rotary dial phone, then she was back, obviously not realizing her conversation had suffered a drop-out.

“So will you help him?”

Sean sat with his back to the façade of the hotel that housed the café and doubled for as much of a home as he had ever known.  He had been unconsciously watching the traffic passing through the intersection.

He said.  “Of course I’ll talk with him for you, but I don’t understand what you want me to do.  I missed a big chunk of the last few minutes of…  wait, is he about 5’ 6 or 7” and considerably overweight?”

“YES!  That must be him.”

“Alright, I’ll talk with him.  Will you be joining us soon or am I to be his only entertainment for the morning?”

The only reply came, not from the phone, but from the chatter of automatic weapons’ fire.  He dove over the hedge that protected the sidewalk from the street as pieces of the building sprayed him and the few other patrons who had been lazily nursing late night alcoholic wounds with morning Turkish coffees.

He popped his head up and then down again but drew no further fire.  He rolled to the gutter and rose quickly, already running toward the source of the disturbance. 

Three cars and a truck had managed to run into each other in the commotion.  He hurdled a small, ancient Fiat that appeared to be enjoying a lingering French kiss with a Citroen panel truck and practically landed on his unexpected breakfast guest.

The victim looked to be in his early forties and of some Arabian descent, maybe Moroccan.  His skin was fairly dark and his face was punctuated by a large hooked nose and brown eyes that were now opened wider than possible.  His mouth was moving with no sound emanating.  His eyes found Sean’s and he managed to squeeze out a few words that sounded like  “safe fleur doctor mints” a combination of French and English or Froglish as it was called in Northern Africa…

His chest was oozing blood and bile in an uncountable number of places and his face seemed to fade to a dark blue.  Gurgling noises confirmed his lungs were punctured and still he was struggling to say something that sounded like “help me” except that he stuttered on the ‘me’ part.

The dying man, suddenly grabbed Sean by the shirt and pulled himself up choking, spraying a thick mist of blood from his mouth and chest.  Issuing a final desperate grunt, life escaped his body taking the last of its strength with it.

 

Suddenly free of his grasp and the burden of his weight, Sean was propelled upright, not realizing how he had been straining against the man’s pulling grip.  A crowd had gathered around the dying man and it receded as one wave, away from Sean as he rose so suddenly.  He looked up to see everyone staring at the corpse.  All but one, directly in front of him but about twenty feet away, who looked piercingly at him for a split second that lasted forever.

Instinctively Sean moved toward the man who darted obliquely to Sean’s right, causing Sean to do the same, bumping directly into Faith who had made her way through the throng, elbowing and wriggling as only a beautiful, desperate woman could.  Once cleared of the last obstacle and finally able to find Sean, she literally threw herself at him in an embrace of relief, arresting his pursuit of the unusual gawker.

“That’s him!  It’s Emile!”  She had caught sight of the corpse and positively identified him as the man she had sent to Sean.

 

Sean held her close to him to keep her from getting too close to the body.  Sean knew her to be tough and resilient, but that was in academia.  As far as he knew, she had never been exposed to this grotesque display of internal organs and fluids.  He would have to watch her carefully for shock and engage her in conversation that would distract her fertile mind from the revulsion she would certainly be feeling. 

He scanned the crowd until he found ‘the watcher’.  He was tall and slender.  He stood nonchalantly at the curb watching them as he lit a yellow cigarette.  His eyes never left Sean, and Sean didn’t break the trance until he had to restrain Faith from kneeling down to the corpse.  Time to leave…

He hustled her out of the eye of the commotion before the police arrived.

“What are you doing?  That was Emile!  Where are you pushing me?”

Sean leaned into her ear as he walked them determinedly out of the crowd.  “Please keep quiet!  We’re being watched!”  He hissed through clenched teeth.

Quieter now, she whispered.  “Where are we going?  You live over there…”

He grabbed her arm before she could point.  “Please don’t advertise my living quarters to the killers until I can make arrangements to move…”

“Oh…  right…”  was all she could manage… then  “So you believe me?”

“Damned hard not to with Emile staining the square as we speak.”  He had no idea what she might need him to believe, but assumed it was part of the “drop out” from their cell conversation moments ago.  He was more lifting and dragging now rather than guiding and supporting her.

“Is it OK to tell you you’re breaking my arms, or would that be giving too much information to the enemy?”  She had recovered from her shock and was already getting testy.  This was her nature.  She had had a tough childhood and was accustomed to rebounding quickly.

He released his grip and put an arm around her waist, whisking her along.  He risked a quick glance over his shoulder and found the watcher’s curb deserted.  No doubt he was attempting to follow them.  Fortunately there was still a pack of cars clogging the street and Sean ducked into an apothecary and out the alley door before the proprietor could appear.  Once in the alley, they doubled back toward the intersection and hugged the wall peering out into the confusion.  A Parisian sounding klaxon was joining the din from a distance.  It would take a good fifteen minutes for rescue and police vehicles to navigate the sea of wrecks and get to the square.  It seems the terrorists/executioners had done a good job of clogging the approach lanes with many cars and trucks disabled by gunshots to tires, engines, and even a petrol container on the backside of a Land Rover.  It seemed that in all of this apparently random gunfire, only Emile had been hit.

The good news was that the watcher was nowhere in sight.  They bolted across the intersection.

“Why is everyone staring at us?”  Sean wondered aloud.

“Could be because your shirt is ripped open and covered with blood, and what are all those papers stuffed into it?”

 

Once again, she had destroyed his focus and stopped him mid-flight in his tracks.  He looked down and sure enough there was a sheaf of type written pages stuck in his ripped shirt.

“You look like you used some poor med student’s term paper to mop up after him in the operating room.”

He stuffed them out of sight, closed his shirt like a robe and started running again, this time grabbing her by the hand.

They burst through the back door of his hotel heading for the back stairs.  Fortunately everyone in the kitchen had evacuated at the first sounds of gunfire and the service elevator was open and vacant.  They entered and he pulled both doors closed moving the operator’s bar to the up position.  The old car creaked and the winch began humming its tune of ascendancy.  He looked at her and at once assessed that she was teetering on the edge of shock.  It was time for some inane conversation.

“I’ve always liked the sound of you panting like that.”

This brought her up short.  She looked into his eyes to see a warm reassuring smile.

“Are you sure you’re as old as you say, ‘cause you sound like a randy junior high school prat most of the time, or a college freshman desperate to get laid.”

  

Thank God it was working.  Dragging a hysterical companion around with him would draw an unhealthy amount of attention to them.

“Ooh, dirty talk, your second most prominent quality.” 

He was guiding the elevator to a stop lining up with the landing on the 21^st floor.  He opened the doors, boosted her into the prep area for employees only, reached into the elevator, and wedged the control lever into the down position nearly losing his balance as the car bucked downward.  He stepped back onto the landing and closed the doors on the ever deepening chasm.

 

“Won’t it crash on the bottom?”  She was leaning over trying to see through the wire mesh window the fate of the elevator car.  Her curiosity was indomitable.  A man she knew and had sent here had just been shot to death on the street below, killers were probably stalking her, and she was worried about the fate of a service elevator.  Somehow, given what had attracted him to Faith, this all made sense.  She was incredibly sexy in a totally unaware way.  She was off-the-charts intelligent with an uncanny ability to compartmentalize her focus.  This talent could make her appear a little ditsy at times as conversations with her could take unexpected turns in directions totally unanticipated by her conversation partner.  This caused many of her competitive professorial associates to mistakenly take her too lightly, only to be ambushed later by her steel trap mind.  Sean found it captivating and fascinating.  She made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t thought possible for him anymore.  Right now it was this talent of hers that he desperately needed to encourage to keep her focused away from the horror going down around them.

They hurried out the door and down the corridor to Sean’s suite.  He broke through the door without bothering to unlock it, tore off his shirt, stuffed the papers in her hands, grabbed a clean polo from the armoire and brought it to the bathroom to wash, where he quickly discovered that his khakis were also splattered with gore.  He took them off along with his boxers, socks and shoes, and returned to the armoire.

  

As he passed in front of her she demurred.  “What? no foreplay? no romance?”

He cut her off.  “Open the safe and remove all of its contents onto the bed.  The combination is 38-24-36.  Left �" right �" left.”

“How sophomoric…”  She muttered under her breath.

“I named it after you…”  He’d heard her anyway.

He’d pulled slacks, shirt, socks, and Nikes out of a drawer and was carrying them into the lavatory.  He scrubbed quickly, toweled, and hustled into the clothes.  He retrieved his wallet, change, money, and keys, and stuffed them in his pockets.

Faith was pouring through the contents of the safe on the bed with unabashed astonishment.

 

“Strip off your clothes”

“Ask nicely.”  Her retort was petulant, teasing.

 

“Put on a pair of my pants.  Pull them up high and let the shirt hang outside them.  Tuck your hair up under my Red Sox cap.”

“Can I leave my underwear on?”  She mocked.

“No, the bra makes it look too obvious that you are a woman.”

Suddenly serious, she sagged a bit at the shoulders and asked.  “Just how much trouble are we in?”

“I’ve no idea, but when people are being gunned down in the street for breakfast, it pays to invest in a little security if you want to catch rather than become the dinner show.”

“Right…”  She said shrugging out of her smock.

Sean picked up the cash, passports, and pistol from the bed.

“Those passports are illegal, aren’t they?  I mean you have to check your passport with the hotel, don’t you?”

“I did.”  He tried not to look at her.  “The gun isn’t standard fare either.”

“I theenk you got some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy!”

“Desi Arnaz was much flatter-chested.  You never pull off that impression.  Try for a latter day Brando.  They say he was pretty full breasted in the end.”

“Hey!  He was a tank!”  She pouted.

“Vanity!  We probably won’t live to see the street again and you’re worried about being called fat.  Let’s go!”

“Do you really think I’m fat?”  She was unbelievable.  She had just looked into the face of a freshly murdered man and she was already segueing into a familiar banter.  She should have been inconsolably hysterical.  It was no wonder he found her so fascinating.

He checked out her disguise.  “I thought I told you to lose the bra?”

“I did…”

“Can’t you tie those things down or something?  You’re going to kill yourself running.”

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a tube top, slipped it over her head, pulled it down to her waist, then back up under her shirt.  The whole procedure took her about 8 seconds.  She looked smugly at Sean like ‘what other impossible thing did you want me to do in less than ten seconds?’  He shook his head and checked his watch.  Only twelve minutes had passed since they had made their escape from the street.  He grabbed a light jacket, stuffed the passports, money, and the rest of the safe contents into the inside pockets.  They went down the corridor leaving the broken door behind.  From the sound of the klaxons, the police had arrived.

 

Sean was dragging Faith down the hall toward the stairwell at the opposite end of the hotel.

 

“Where did you leave your car?”

“Hey!  Macho man!  Let go of my hand.  Nobody is going to believe I’m a guy like this!  I came in a taxi.”

She bolted past him.  He watched the sway of her hips as she ran in front of him.  No one will believe she’s a guy anyway he thought to himself.  At least she doesn’t look like the bombshell from the street.  If anyone had been given their descriptions, their current appearance should throw them off enough for them to slip out of the area.

They hit the stairwell door.  Faith pulled it open and Sean bulled past her.

 

“So much for chivalry,” she panted.

They clambered down the stairs at breakneck speed.  She was young and limber and he worked out every day at one bar or another hoisting Hennessy or whatever looked thirst-quenching that day.  By the time they hit the street, he was ready to barf up an internal organ.

“You look terrible, old man…”

 

He took a deep breath, held it, and said, with as much aplomb as possible,  “And you run like a fox.  Are you sure you’re a fat broad?”

She slapped him hard enough to require a tooth inventory.

They were at the end of the alley that ran behind the hotel.  While Sean’s head was still ringing from the love tap, and his espresso was searching for any express exit from his stomach, she was stepping in front of a taxi.

 

The hack already had a fare exiting the melee, and while it might be difficult to identify Faith as the hysteric who had made a spectacle of herself at the scene, she could still stop traffic.  There was no way she could be made to look like a guy.

Sean piled into the back of the cab behind Faith.  He heard her say “Where are we going, Sean?”

He looked up at the passenger to see a familiar pair of eyes.

“Yes, Sean, where are we going?” said the watcher.

Reviews

[A. Amos]

I ordered and am reading, Remote Control...if any one who want to understand a core of story telling I highly suggest to read Chris McGrath.

“Good morning, love. I missed you last night. Sorry I couldn’t make the seminar, but writers have to write when the spirit moves them…”

I truly enjoyed above line and I know I am in for many others like this one. Start, introduction and story...simply fabulous!

[Chris McGrath]

Thank you so much for the commentary and sharing your reaction to what was a lame excuse from Sean, but you recognized the core exposition encapsulated in it! I've written this explicitly for readers like you, sir!

[A. Amos]

You're most welcome Sir...it's an honor!

[Chris McGrath]

Once again, you are too kind, and I fully appreciate your commentary and friendship!

[Cherrie Palmer]

Strong opening, opens the door just enough to meet the characters and them before you know. You are trapped in the action, asking what next.

[Malister Mikey]

Sorry it took so long to express my thoughts on your first chapter, I quite enjoyed it it has very well done character developing it caught my interest right away and I'm very curious of what is to happen in the next chapter. Sean is a quite impressive sight her quickly not only made himself known to be able to handle the pressure but to help Faith as well. the ending of this chapter is a brilliantly down cliffhanger. I also enjoyed how you put a sense of comedy into the mix of seriousness going on, I enjoy books like this a lot and will start reading on chapter 2 right away sorry again for taking to long my friend.

[Chris McGrath]

Thank you for your positive review! It was my intent to sweep the reader into a frenetic pace without compromising deep character development or immersion into the exotic setting.

[Malister Mikey]

Well you did a very good job at it