Читать книгу The Isle of Olympia - Andreas Karpasitis - Страница 6

At the Ritz Hotel, James was sitting at a corner table in the hotel’s bar. His long scruffy beard and wrinkly shirt cast a spotlight on him, as the rest of the bar’s guests were immaculately dressed. His eyes showed how he hadn’t had proper sleep for weeks and on top of that he was fueling his insomnia with bouts of alcohol. The table didn’t look much better with it being covered in paper, folders, and photographs.

James nervously took notes in a notebook while shuffling papers around the table, rearranging them as if trying to solve a puzzle. He had been visibly worn down, and his state of well-being immensely deteriorated. James had been through a roller coaster the past decade. It all began a few months after he started diving deeper and deeper into the accident of the Princess of Wales.

He could still remember the two men that approached him and tried to convince him to stop looking into it. He refused. James was never a man that would accept being intimidated or pushed around. That incident even made him more convinced that he was getting closer to something meaningful—a huge revelation. Then, month by month, things were taking a turn for the worse; rumors started to flow. Mistakes from the past started appearing out of nowhere. It seemed as if someone was specifically targeting him, ruining his trustworthiness and his reliability as a loyal and capable agent. It was a slow but pretty steep downhill from that moment on.

He reached to grab his glass of drink, taking the last sip of warm watery whiskey.

“Mate, one more,” he quickly shouted to the bartender at the other corner of the large, half-full room while waving the empty glass in the air. The tables that surrounded him were purposefully left empty. People felt threatened and uncomfortable by his presence, his weird and unsettling behavior. He was sitting there for almost two hours now, whispering to himself like a psychotic man.

The bartender walked towards the table carrying a glass of whiskey with ice, and with care placed it on the side of the table.

“Sir, I would advise you take it easy. We’ve been getting complaints; I’m kindly asking you to keep it down and please just tidy up your table, we have guests in this hotel that expect to get their money's worth. Needless to say, this is a top of the class hotel with top of the class clients,” the bartender whispered in James’s ear trying to warn him politely.

James kept scribbling notes; shaking his head, completing ignoring the requests of a cornered and annoyed bartender.

“Sir?” the bartender repeated anxiously as he slightly raised his voice.

“Yeah, got it,” James replied in a slightly louder voice, people around him glanced uncomfortably. “I will be out of your way in a jiffy, my meeting should be starting anytime now. May I remind you that I’m also a paying customer,” he continued with a lowered, relaxed voice, slowly becoming aware of the tension he was causing.

James was scheduled to meet a reporter that night to share his collection of old and new discoveries. He wanted to start exposing things as he believed it the people’s right to know that secrets were being kept from them. Things were not as they seemed.

His plans changed after Murphy approached him; he convinced him to postpone his meeting as he wanted to discuss a few things with him. James had his doubts, but he decided that one day of delay wasn’t a big issue. In any case, he still had this sense of trust towards Murphy, regardless of the lack of support when they last met in Paris. James could see the loyalty in Murphy’s eyes. It was evident that he was doing what he was doing to make a difference. In a way, he could see himself in Murphy, before everything started to come tumbling down.

The bartender walked away from the table and resumed his post. One suited gentleman at the next table kept watching James with a stone-cold expression. James’s gaze crossed his.

“Will you just mind your own freaking business?” he attacked him and turned his attention back to his notebook, without concern about any possible repercussions to his attitude.

The man, calmly without blinking his eyes, kept his eyes nailed on James. He slowly moved his hand into the inside of his jacket, grabbing his drink, seemingly untouched by the brief confrontation with James.

James continued with his obsessive and nervous movements around the table. Any sort of sixth sense he used to have completely vanished when he stopped working for MI6. On top of that, the alcohol and the sleepless nights were not helping with his awareness. Otherwise, he might have noticed the menacing movements of the other gentleman. His life was a bit less wild the past half-decade. Most of his time was spent researching and talking to people or obsessing with his conspiracy theories. Besides, it was only a few hours ago that he made the quick, impulsive decision to test the waters and share all the new information he had managed to uncover with Murphy. He hoped that, finally, someone would take him seriously and maybe back him up.