THE SPANISH WAITER: TWELVE

The three secret agents are needing to return to the UK

“I hope that wasn’t too much of a strain, Ivan?” asked Tomas anxiously, “I mean, having to serve the people who lost you so much time?”

Ivan Maybe smiled at him. “Not at all, my friend,” he said, “I learned something very valuable.”

Tomas raised his eyebrows. “You did?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Ivan, “I learned that those dreadful years weren’t exactly wasted. During that time I mixed with some very unpleasant people and discovered that I could never be one of them even if I wanted to be. And today, waiting on three virtual strangers, I learned that they were exactly like the unpleasant people I had mixed with for twelve years. Each one, even the woman, was more concerned with themselves than the others in the group. And, you know, instead of feeling anger that I was their servant I looked into their eyes and saw fear. Uncertainty. In all three of them, and again I observed even in the woman. She was dressed as a man way back when they landed me in the soup, and it wasn’t as good as the soup I served them just now, nothing like as good, because it tasted bitter for twelve long years.”

He smiled at Tomas and his lovely wife Valantina, and went about his business of clearing away luncheon things, wondering if what he’d said was true or had been no more than meaningless waffle, and decided as he cleared the other table that had been used that lunch time that it was true.

The years hadn’t been wasted because, slowly, they’d turned him into a different man. The incarceration might have embittered him and he supposed in a way it had, but now, a few years later, he could tell that in just about every way he was in a better place than those who had stitched him up and been responsible for locking him up. Because he was a different man and they were just the same. Boney was still the Bonehead. It was as simple as that. He had grown and they hadn’t.

It had crossed his mind in the past that as he’d served a prison sentence for a murder he hadn’t committed it might be justified if he actually did commit it if he ever met the man he was assumed to have killed. He could quite easily slip something nasty into Boney’s soup, not that he actually had anything that would fit the bill. But if somehow he did, nobody would know it was him because he was in a foreign country and if the Spanish police wanted to look for anyone they’d look at his two companions who seemed to be almost constantly on edge when he served them, almost as if they were scared of each other.

He smiled to himself, and watched them slowly rise from their chairs and make their way out.

He’d picked up enough from the snippets of conversation that he’d overheard to know that they’d mislaid their important documents and had been ordered back home. He also pieced together enough to place them somewhere other than the world of thugs he’d originally thought them to be. After all, Boney had been playing the part of a ne’er do well with a clapped out old banger of a car. He’d buried himself on a run down estate of terraced houses as a way of being accepted by a gang of potential terrorists, and his orders had been to neutralise the individual leading the gang.

He’d done that, and when the villain was safely behind bars and his two companions had joined him in order to rescue him.when his work had come to a satisfactory conclusion. Ivan hadn’t heard all of that as he served the three courses of a leisurely lunch, but had filled in a few blanks until he got the story just about spot on. He knew who Boney was and, what’s more, he knew who he worked for. The word The Firm had been mentioned, and he guessed that was a euphemism for one of the shadowy secret services he knew nothing about bar the fact that they existed.

So the three of them were going to make their way home to England, but how on Earth were they going to manage it without passports?

The truth is they didn’t know either. Their intention was to make the journey as swiftly as possible but without a plan. Boney intended to let fate and circumstances guide him, and both of those were unknown quantities. He knew that and it excited him to think that the success of their journey was in the hands of unknown spectral deities.

He imagined they would find a lorry that, in an unguarded moment with its driver attending to something or other away from it, they would be able to scramble onto. He’d heard that desperate refugees from starvation or conflict often managed the journey to the UK that way and to him it was preferable to lying squat on the boards of a small boat that could overturn when the first large wave came its way. But he kept his thoughts to himself. If anyone was going to make a decision it was going to be him.

They had been struggling along an endless road with their thumbs out when traffic approached, for a couple of unsuccessful hours, and afternoon was well on its way to evening when Murial brought him to a standstill.

“The answer to our prayers,” she exclaimed, “look, Boney, I saw it from the coach when we were on our way towards Tomas’s hotel and it’s exactly what I thought it was.”

“What?” spluttered their leader, not sure what she meant because, being in front of her, he couldn’t see where she was pointing.

“I guess it’s some sort of industrial plant where things are developed, things that might be the answer to out prayers,” she said.

The building she was pointing at may once had been a barn but had been converted into something very different, and the sign, in smallish lettering, that was mounted near the entrance, was in English despite the obvious fact they were in Spain.

WHIRLYBIRD MECHANICS, it read, and underneath that heading was an artist’s impression of a helicopter followed by Solar Powered Flight Development.

But it wasn’t that sign that had captured her attention but what was obviously a helicopter standing proudly outside t=a wide door, surrounded by a goup of men, admiring it.

Murial crossed the road and hid behind a straggly hedge and watched as a man wearing a red helmet climbed into it while the other dispersed to what they apparently thought was a safe distance, and after a few moments it silently, spookily almost, climbed into the air.

“Our solution,” she whispered, watching as it flew in a broad circle.

“You cannot be serious!” exclaimed Boney, “none of us knows a damned thing about flying a machine like that!

“But I do,” smiled Murial, “I most certainly do!”

© Peter Rogerson 06/11/22

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