It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I was sitting here waiting for our next client to arrive on the first Saturday I’ve had available in nearly a month while I looked at the few pages of my diary which Tan recently filled in. I need to find a better place to hide and secure it. I don’t mind him writing in it but sometimes I put stuff in it that I would rather keep secret for a while.

 © 2010 by Lilith Langtree & Rénae Dáºmas. This work may not be replicated or presented in whole or in part by any means electronic or otherwise without the express consent of the work’s Owner (copyright holder), with the exception of the private and non-commercial viewing by the reader who is also the end purchaser. ALL Rights Reserved, including but not limited to ownership of Characters, final content decision, and more. This is a work of Fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this story are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents past, present or future is purely coincidental. Any and all images which may be shown within this work are taken through license under Corel with the exception of the title image which is Photo Credit to Irina Sheik. No affiliations, involvement or gender assignations through the use of these or any images of the subject or subjects contained within those posted images is to be implied, intended or inferred.
An Aldoennetti & Langtree Original.

On the home front, our oldest daughter, Cynthia, has just finished seventh grade and the school system is making noises about advancing her another grade or possibly even two when she returns to school next year. Seventh to tenth in one step. I don’t know if that’s a good idea, she has already jumped two during grade school and has started making noises about wanting to test her way through most of high school when she gets there.

There’s a lot more to school than just the grades. It’s the place where a child begins to learn social interaction. I’ve looked at what has happened to other children who have advanced so quickly, ending up in college three or more years before their peers. They do fine academically, but their social skills are almost non-existent.

Our youngest son, Jonathon, seemed to be following in similar footsteps since he had already advanced one grade while the school system wanted to do two and I wouldn’t allow it. Once again they were saying he was seriously under challenged and were trying to move him up another grade. I suppose I’ll allow it this time since both the other children are in the same boat. How could we be so lucky as to have four children who are rushing through school almost as quickly as they drink a glass of milk? Speaking of milk, I think I better check Nora’s list of things we need for the pantry and the fridge.

If they were our children genetically then there might be something on which to base their achievements, not that Tan nor I are all that superior in our mental abilities but it would provide a common basis which would help make sense out of it all. Surely home training can’t count for that much. I also doubt we could have come out with four genius level children just from the luck of the draw, so to speak. By the way, Cynthia recognised her difficulty with seeing blood and revised her decision about being a medical doctor. She is now looking at palenotology and archaeology as possibles, after seeing The Mummy for about the hundredth time. Of course boys are beginning to look at her in school, but so far she isn’t looking back. I’m beginning to wonder if we are going to have a female Indiana Jones on our hands soon. Or possibly a Lara Croft. I don’t believe I’ll mention that as she might watch the programs and then begin to follow Angelina Jolie’s movies and decide to become an agent. I don’t need grey hair before it turns grey naturally, and I intend to continue colouring it for as long as possible. If I stay away from the lighter colours it won’t turn blue, will it?

Richard and Darlene are both doing well in school, they are each advanced a year. I’m beginning to doubt my own memories and start wondering if this is their first time or their second? God, I guess that means I’m getting old? I can’t even remember if all my children have advanced more than one extra grade in school? Apparently they are educated well beyond their peers. It has to be something Tan is doing during their home schooling since I only advanced one extra grade during all my time in school. Of course I had a lot of additional distractions and missed a lot of school days as a result.

The school board has spent no little time looking at our family recently since all four of our children will now have jumped extra school grades. It became more or less expected that our second two would likely do the same after both of the older children did so. For some reason this worries me more than going into foreign countries with Tan in order to gather intelligence.

Speaking of intelligence, Tan and I will be off on another assignment again soon. This time will be for six weeks. Both Jonathon and Richard have declared their interest in becoming spies. They are consuming every 007 movie as well as any others they are able to get their hands on. I haven’t the heart to tell them it really isn’t like that. I’m hoping they will move on to something else in a few years.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“Tan, a penny will hardly get you anywhere. My thoughts must be worth at least a dollar.”

“Okay, a dollar for your thoughts. Somehow that doesn’t sound quite the same.”

“I’m thinking about the children. The school system wants to move them all up an extra grade when they go back to school next year. Academically, they are probably capable of handling it. I’m concerned about their social skills.”

“This is something new for Jonathon and Darlene, isn’t it?”

“I think they have done it once. Sometimes I have trouble remembering who has advanced how many. I’m not so worried about them if this is only the first time. The others already have a couple of skips under their belts and the board is talking about moving Cynthia up two more grades. That would jump her from just finishing seventh to beginning tenth in one step and four years early. That can’t be good.”

“Hmm. I see what you mean. What if we only allow one skip every other year?”

“That was a bit more along the lines I was thinking as well. That would, I hope, allow her to adjust a little more between steps. She’s interested in testing through high school and I’m concerned about allowing her to do that.”

“What about allowing her to take ninth, skip the next year to eleventh and then test through twelfth? That would give her two more years before she moves on to college.”

“That will still place her into college four years early. I hate to hold her down but...”

“Yeah. What if we allow her to do it though? We could stipulate that we will watch not only her college grades but her ability to interact with the other freshmen. Not that we want to hold her back but we are concerned about how she will be able to interface with other young adults as she rushes into that big bad world out there.”

“I was thinking about something along those lines as well. I’m concerned, Tan, that she may try to test through some of her college classes and thus cut her college years short as well. I’m worried that she may go after and procure her doctorate as much as five years early. I just don’t know how others will take to having a twenty to twenty two year old with an advanced degree or two in charge of a project when they themselves are in their late twenties. They either won’t take her seriously or they will attempt to undermine her authority. Again, it would be her abilities at social interaction which will be of great importance to her.”

“Why don’t we just sit down and discuss this with her? We could let her know just what we are concerned about. She could take a couple of extra years in college to gain social skills while studying and procuring advanced degrees in peripheral courses. That would give her the ability to interact as well as improve her background education.”

I nod my head in agreement. “Let’s talk with her this evening. We need to help her plan out her approach to her future and discussing this with her like she’s a responsible adult now will likely predispose her to coming to us with future problems when she wants to work out solutions. We need to let her make the decision but we can point out all the possible problems and benefits. Sounds good to me, Tan.”

“Okay. Now that we’ve solved the world’s problems do you think we can get ready for the next client?”

I tag him lightly on his arm as he moves away then I go check the material Tashia finished editing last night. We have Forty Seven minutes twenty eight seconds of material in five approximately equal segments. That allows for Twelve minutes and thirty two seconds of other material to be inserted by either the client or the Television station to make up an hour segment. The five clips are contiguous allowing them to be presented without interruption if so desired. If the client signs off on this edit job then all we need to do is download this finished project to a XHD disk plus give them a second disk with all the original unedited material and our job is done.

It isn’t until the next night that Tan and I have time to discuss what we intend to do for a cover for our up and coming fiasco. He suggested we might offer ourselves up as blatant spies. That worked for us once before when we were doing so many things spies do in the movies as though we were tourists trying to pretend we were spies. In fact, when we finally were ready to return home, the people who had been watching us even offered to take us and our stuff to the airport. There they advised us that tourists trying to pretend they were spies might seem very melodramatic and exciting but it could get us into some really bad situations if we were up against people who didn’t know what spies were really like.

“The two of you would never be convincing spies. The next time you go on a vacation, perhaps you could pretend to be concert musicians or some such thing.”

Tan and I looked at each other and developed big smiles then looked back at our erstwhile surveillance agents who both shook their heads and just said, “No. No. Bad idea. Maybe you could just be tourists who are pretending to be tourists.”

Tanner asked them, “How about a crown prince and princess who are pretending to be American tourists?”

“No, that won’t work. Your accents are not good enough to be Americans.”

“Oh. How about...”

“Stop! They are calling for your boarding. Please have pleasant flight.”

We shake their hands and insist they take some money for helping us with our things. We left them standing there with about forty dollars worth of currency, knowing that now they would need to write up a contact report explaining why we gave them the money.

One of them was barely heard to say something like, “crazy tourists, trying to pretend they are American spies.”

“It could have been fun but their accents gave them away.”

“At least we had an easy assignment for a few weeks.”

Tan and I didn’t breath easy until we were in the London office and dispatching our information back to the states.

“You two did what? How did you get them to help you take your luggage to the airport?”

“Their car was a bit like the cabs so we pretended we thought they were one of the unmarked cabs. Kat was keeping them busy in conversation while I was loading their trunk with the luggage. By the time I had nearly finished, Kat was sitting in the back seat and the two nursemaids were so frustrated trying to explain they weren’t a taxi that they finally gave up and drove us to the airport then helped us unload our luggage and made certain we made it onto the correct plane.”

“And you gave each of them a tip?”

“Yeah. I hope they have to fill out contact reports the same as we do.”

“You two are just plain nuts. You know that don’t you?”

“It worked didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I doubt anyone else could have pulled it off. Go on; your stuff will be gone with the next transmission and you two can get some shut-eye before you fly back to the States.”

“Thanks. Anything else or can we just make tracks in the morning for the airport?”

“Just report there. Your tickets will be waiting.”

“Okay. Say hi to Tony for us.”

“He isn’t going to believe it either.”

“Nah... He knows us. He’ll believe it.”

“Get outta here you two.”

The next morning we were at the airport and had made it through the security checkpoint. We had forty minutes before our flight and a plane was just pulling up to an adjacent terminal ramp so they could disembark passengers. Our plane was at our ramp but apparently they were waiting on a flight crew before boarding.

Tan and I had spent a portion of our night enjoying ourselves and Tan was sipping on a vendor’s coffee while we waited. I had nothing to do but watch people so I was whiling away the time doing just that. I caught a glimpse of someone I thought I knew but they faded away before I could get a good look.

“Tan?”

He swallowed his sip of coffee, “Yeah?”

“I thought I saw someone. Off in that direction. Don’t go anywhere but kind of take a stretch and look around as you stand there.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Oh, yes. If my imagination isn’t playing tricks with me. Someone we know and would love to put down.”

He gets up and gives a casual check around us before sitting down again.

“Two possibly three out there. I don’t see the one you mentioned. Want me to take a closer look?”

“No. I think we better not split up.”

“I wonder what would bring him out of the woodwork?”

“Two guesses if he’s as vindictive as you have led me to believe. Are you armed?”

“Not since the security check point.”

“You can bet they will be.”

“Probably.”

“If it becomes necessary, I have two opportunities built into my purse and there is one in the brown mascara tube in my cosmetic case. Pull off the end, twist the bottom and then aim the open hole at the target up to twenty feet away.”

“I think it would be better not to bring our toys to the party. That could be what they’re waiting for so they may have us arrested and taken out of public view.”

“Boarding’s in ten or so.”

“Looks like they are going to board now. Flight crew’s going aboard. Lets make our way together to one of the pay phones over there. We can let the office know before we board.”

“Good idea, Tan.”

We get up together with Tan carrying my cosmetic case and go over to the bank of phones. Two minutes later we are talking with the office and pass the information on before advising them of our boarding call. Five minutes later we are on the plane and waiting for the push-back. Five minutes after that everyone is being herded off the plane and as soon as the flight crew is out the plane is towed away from the terminal and out to the middle of nowhere or as close to it as they can get at a busy airport.

We hit the phones again and let the office know of this new development.

It was another ten minutes before there were six men from our London office in the terminal along with a dozen of their British counterparts. It was a good six hours before our luggage had made it off the plane and back into our possession. We wound up being driven to a military airbase and once there we were put onto a smaller aircraft to be flown back to the US. None of the people we had seen in the public terminal were interdicted so it was a non-productive little bit of antagonism apparently designed to annoy us rather than do anything else. Just something to let us know that he was still watching and biding his time before he crawled back out of the woodwork at some other time in the future.

We arrived in the States six and a half hours later and a hour after that we were back at the farm. We went through a couple of hours of non-productive discussion concerning the bomb threat which had been phoned in with regard to our flight; the first we heard of it.

Apparently Emerson’s tentacles still stretched out across the intelligence community. He seemed to have little difficulty learning things he wanted to know about people whom he disliked. We watched like hawks for a few months and never let up in our protection of the children but Emerson wouldn’t surface in our swimming pool for another four years. I couldn’t help but liken him to a piranha. All mouth, all bite.

We were sitting at Richard’s graduation, Cynthia had graduated last year and gone on to University. We pulled some strings so there were a couple of people keeping an eye on her for us since we were still highly protective concerning our children. Cynthia had finished her first year of University but she was only fifteen and as we predicted, she intended to test through a number of subjects. Our concerns about her social capabilities turned out to be less than founded for she not only was climbing the academic ladder quickly, she also was socially gregarious and was cultivating a large number of friends. Her more than adequate vocabulary also helped.

Richard intended to pretty much do the same thing except his choice of University was a couple of States West of us rather than North. We were becoming a little concerned for our children who were or would be hundreds of miles away from us. At least we still had three and four years before Jonathon and Darlene joined them. Tan and I were both concerned about Richard as we hadn’t found anyone to keep an eye on him for us. That can drive a parent a little batty. I probably wouldn’t have worried so much if our two academians weren’t so young. They might have University grade educations but they were both four years younger than their “peers”, and working hard at widening that gap.

During the next year, things remained relatively calm; if you can call having two teenagers at University — calm. More like subdued panic. There was no sign of Emerson or any of his ilk but that didn’t mean much. He had a nasty habit of remaining invisible up to the moment he struck. His ego required him to be “in the neighborhood” so to speak whenever something he planned came down.

We had a couple of reports of possible sightings up near the University Cynthia was attending and rushed to check that out. We had no indications from Richard but he wasn’t paying all that much attention so it was a week before we were able to obtain a photo which proved it was an older Emerson who was seen up near Cynthia. A copy of the photo was sent to Richard with predictable results. Four days later one of his buddies saw it and mentioned seeing someone who looked like it hanging around a week or two earlier.

We began to watch Jonathon and Darlene a bit closer once we knew he was watching our children. This made it more difficult to watch our two younger children so we entrusted that to Tony’s care since they were schooling right in his ‘backyard’ so to speak.

I went to be with Darlene and Tan took it upon himself to watch over Jonathon, hopefully without him knowing about it since he would have seen it as interference rather than assistance. All those years and he never got beyond the spy movies. He still thinks that’s how things happen in the spy craft world despite anything Tan or I have told him. Bad guys really aren’t vindictive are they? No, not much they aren’t, sometimes even the ‘good’ guys. Anyway, Tan is trying to watch over Jonathon without staying close. Good Luck.

Several weeks go by and nothing more surfaces. We can’t continue to babysit so we return home to nurse our worries.

Tan and I discuss our options again and again. I’m for going hunting, after all with a little assistance from Tony we could find that snake on his home ground and take care of the problem once and for all. After all, to kill a cobra you just need a good mongoose.

Things mellowed out again for a little over a year before we again had some sort of potential contact. This time Tan and I were heavily involved with our courses and preparing a group for their not so insignificant tasks they would be expected to achieve in yet one more foreign land. The President had made it known to his immediate circles who made it known to those under them and so on until we wound up trying to prepare those who were expected to achieve the impossible with little or no resources and all without anyone being the wiser.

About three weeks into the fiasco, Tony sent for us and dispatched us into the fray. We were over there for about a month before we got word that Emerson had made a move but it had been thwarted. They thought it best to tell us and bring us home rather than to wait as long as possible trusting to luck we didn’t find out through other channels, which we did.

Fortunately for Tony there was only a twenty minute difference so we knew he had tried to let us know before we found out through our own sources. During our return trip, Emerson struck at us.

It happened in London. I spotted Emerson and managed to dodge his more than inadequate assistants quickly enough, Tan didn’t.

Two months later he was out of the hospital and I accompanied him back home but he was very much a different person than he had been. An induced heart attack has a way of doing things like that.

We made it home and the children all came to stay with us at semester break. Tan wasn’t moving around much any more. He didn’t have the energy nor did he have the endurance since whatever Emerson’s people managed to get into him had a long term effect. I spent most of my days working or acting as nursemaid to Tanner.

Mom was great but she was getting up there in years and many of the friends she had gathered were either beginning to move away or drift. She finally decided to take her money and retire to Florida where a number of her friends were living. Sis meanwhile had taken the business and was making a name for herself in the industry. We kept in touch, nearly every day, but it wasn’t the same as when we were all working together.

Eventually I spent most of my time worrying about the children and taking care of Tan. His sister would drop by as often as she could but she was up for some appointment to some judgeship with increased responsibility, I didn’t understand all of it but she seemed to be enthusiastic over the opportunity.

About two years in, I went shopping and when I came home Tan was gone. There was a photo of us laying on the bed next to him. A photo neither of us took or had taken. In the distant background you could see Emerson. He just couldn’t let it go. Even with Tan an invalid, Emerson had to push it.

I made the funeral arrangements after all the normal legal hoopla and once it was all over I paid Tony’s successor a visit. He, at my insistence, somewhat reluctantly set the wheels in motion, providing me with the information I wanted about two weeks later. I went to visit each of the children spending a day with each of them before I took the information and disappeared.

Six months later I returned to watch over my babies until they were all through University and taking care of themselves, my work done and most of the threats removed. The smaller threats were too afraid to try anything but I wasn’t about to forget about them. I just had more important things to take care of at the moment. They would wait until I was good and ready to make them pay as well.

to be continued