Chapter 8: A new order

“You could have been killed, Agnes.”

“Agnes is dead.” Agnes replies again.

“No, sweetheart, I told you that I would never kill you.”

“Danny, Agnes is already dead.”

I look at her. “You can’t be dead. If we are talking, and you’re dead, then so am I.”

“Hadn’t you ever considered, Danny, that twins run in families?”

The dream always ends with a smile on her cute but dumb face.

I had this dream running over and over in my head like a broken record. The noise of the US Navy helicopter, in which I am lying on a stretcher, is deafening but I can read her lips and she can read mine. And then I sleep again and, all the while I sleep I dream, that same crazy dream all over again.

Then I wake up in a hospital side ward. I have always been quick to orient myself on waking and know I am in a hospital and in a small room. I am connected up to various monitors, so I try to relax and not set off any alarms. I had a saline drip in my arm, which was understandable, remembering what I had just been through. It is quiet and dark. Maybe it’s night-time, but it is not as dark as it was in that freight container. Nothing is as dark as that. I can quite easily see the shape of someone sitting quietly in a chair.

I sense it is Agnes. I had hoped it would be her there with me when I awoke. I lift my head and call out.

“Agnes?”

She sits up immediately and rises from her chair, moving to the side of my bed.

“Take it easy, honey. You are in a hospital in Salonica. They say that, if you respond to treatment as well as you have so far, you will be released in the morning, not straight away, but after tests and when the doctors do their rounds. We have a plane standing by to take us home.”

“Which home?” I smile, the thoughts of home, either home of comfort.

“The Manor House near Slocombe’s of course. The kids are in school and home is where the family is, right, honey?”

“Right, sweetheart.” I relax back into the pillow and she grabs my hand.

“So, you are going to be under my orders for once, Mister Matthews, is that going to be OK with you, soldier?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Good. You are going to stay at home, you’ll train our kids to be swimming champions and confident teenagers and grow up to be young women of drive and purpose, and no more chasing around the world beating up whoever you feel might have wronged you in the distant past, aren’t you?”

“That depends on whether they stop wronging me, my dear.”

“I think they have, honey. Simon Smithers will be put away for thirty years, and the intel on Wrongturn is that he has disappeared for good, probably in a shallow grave somewhere near his Turkish villa. As he’s still PJ’s uncle, I hope he’s resting in peace.”

“I hope so too.”

“One day, however, first PJ and then the twins, will be old enough to be attracted to boys of their own age and boys will in turn be attracted to them. If you are just as vengeful as a father as you have been a husband, what do you think family life is going to be like?”

“It’ll be hell for me, I know that!”

She laughs, “Danny, it is going to be hell for all of us!”

I laugh too and playfully slap the back of her hand. She frowns, plays hurt, and rubs it vigorously, so I pull her hand down to me and kiss the back of it to make it better.

She stretches over to pull her chair closer with her foot, so she can sit down, without releasing our holding hands.

“Ahh,” I say. “Is it that time for us to talk?”

“No, honey, not now, not here. It is time to conserve your strength, for you to fall asleep with me waiting by your side, and, when it is time to wake up, we will be discharged to fly home. Only then when we are safe and comfortable will we sit and talk about the rest of our lives.”

“I’d like that, sweetheart.”

And with that I fall asleep.

It wasn’t long before I was living my helicopter dream once more, confronted with the nightmare of Agnes’ death and my conversation with her ghost. Or was I the ghost?

✖✖✖

The executive jet was waiting on the apron ready to take us home smoothly. At Salonica airport I met up with my old Major Forest, now a Lieutenant Colonel, although he was dressed in civvies.

We only exchanged pleasantries rather than ask any questions on either side about how or why we were there. In the car to the airport, Agnes mentioned that the Colonel and his good lady were joining us for Christmas in the Caribbean. I nodded, not wanting to mention to her at this point that I remembered that the Forests’ only son, a young Army officer, was victim of a UID in Afghanistan.

Another man at the airport, an American who I never knew before, and who didn’t even bother to introduce himself by name, but he shook my hand with the impression of genuine warmth and pleasure. He thanked me for drawing Simon Smithers out of hiding, telling me that my old mucker had been a permanent thorn in the side of financial institutions worldwide for almost a decade.

On the flight home I heard that Polly had stayed behind with our three kids. Freddie had joined up with Colonel Forest and volunteers from his new unit, from which those who volunteered to rescue me from the container were unanimous.

Freddie had returned home to Polly and the girls immediately the mission was over, while I was recovering in hospital. By the time we reached the Manor House, I was more than ready to nap in bed for a couple of hours, before the kids got home from school.

It was wonderful seeing PJ, Tina and Mickie again, as soon as they came home from school, and it was both a tearful and happy reunion.

To hear them say how they reacted to me suddenly disappearing and gone for ten days, and then with the twins’ mother and ‘Uncle’ Freddie following me almost immediately, was too much for us all to bear without tears, and we were all very emotional.

Although they had Polly with them as the parent in charge, the twins had only known her for a couple of weeks. They also hinted during their conversation that others, some form of protection in the form of shifts of grim, unsmiling, but ever watchful men and women with American accents, had also been present at the Manor during my absence.

Soon the children got their reassurances that they were still at the centre of our world and, once satisfied in that regard, they went off to do their own things, leaving Agnes and me to retire to one of several intimate drawing rooms that the old Manor House was blessed with.

She makes sure I am comfortable in an easy chair, while she sits immediately in front of me in a straight-back chair brought through from the dining room, and takes a hold of my hands.

“So, ten days on, we are finally having that talk, huh, sweetheart?” I ask, “Are you now going to tell me why the hell you were there in the middle of a ferocious fire-fight in a bullet-proof vest and helmet?”

“Yes, I will. But first I want to tell you a story about a set of twins, twin girls actually, just like our twin girls. It is supposed to be a true story, but who knows, maybe you can fill in the gaps that I am not sure of?”

“Maybe,” I replied, “I feel we may have already had this conversation, or at least started it, but I’m hazy on the detail, so carry on, it’s your story.”

“OK. Anyway, to start with, one very strange thing about these twins was that they were born on different days, different months and different years, which gave the eldest twin a disproportionate sense of domination over her young sister.”

“Mmm. How many minutes were they apart?”

“About an hour, 60 minutes or so. They weren’t precisely timed, just rounded to the nearest quarter hour on the official birth certificates. The eldest girl was born at half eleven on New Year’s Eve and the youngest girl at half past midnight on New Year’s Day.”

I grin, “I bet that story was told to everyone who knew them. Were these twins you are talking about as cute as ours are?”

“I assume people thought so. Like ours, although they were so identical in looks that only a mother could tell them apart, they were very different in their personalities and how they progressed in life. One was very bright and the other rather dumb.”

“I always think of ours as ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’.” I laugh. “And I was always able to tell our twins apart right from the beginning.”

“Yes, you could, which I felt was strange at first, as it even took me a few weeks to be certain when they were babies, but then I learned that you have very good powers of observation. I agree, Tina and Mickie are nearly identical in looks but quite different in the way they interact with the world, as were the identical twins in my story. If I may be allowed to continue....?”

“Go on.”

“Thank you. The eldest we will call ‘A’ and the one who was an hour younger, we will call ‘B’.”

“So who was the bright one?”

“The youngest, ‘B’, but she was also very quiet, timid, submissive even, especially in the company of her sister. ‘A’ was both the boldest and the bossy one. She was the trailblazer, the one that was first to everything, first to walk, first to talk, first to climb a tree and the first to fall and break two bones. She was also the first to kiss, first to date, the first to fall in love, the first of multiple times, the first to lose her virginity, and the first to marry. In fact ‘B’ was never married, and, well, it turned out she was last to her sister in everything that the eldest sister gave credence to.”

“Poor ‘B’. Was she like the girl that had never been kissed?”

“Of course not, well not entirely, but this is not a fairy story, Danny.” Agnes says with some exasperation in her voice. “I do wish you wouldn’t interrupt me or I’ll lose my thread.”

I breathe a silent ‘Sorry’, pull her hands to my lips and kiss them, all the while holding eye contact with her.

Her returning glare softens to a smile. “Don’t you think it strange that two of your three children are twins?”

“Never gave it a thought, sweetheart.”

“Twins run in families, honey, the twins ‘A’ and ‘B’ that I speak of were called Agnes and Berta.” She pauses, her eyes boring into mine. “Agnes died ... while Bertha is still alive. Agnes died while giving birth to her children, Danny. In London. Five years ago. She died giving birth to twins. I was there with Agnes because she told me she had no one else to call on. I was working in America before that, but I came over immediately she asked me to come. I always did what she asked.”

“And you are Berta?”

“Yes, Daniel, I am, or rather I was Berta. I was not the Agnes you married. I was not the outgoing twin, the one you made love to, fell in love with, and asked to marry you. I was Berta, the quiet and studious one, locked away in airless rooms, analyzing and theorizing, alone and lonely. Did you not notice that my English had improved so much in the five years you were away? I hardly have an accent, compared to my sister.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I thought that you had picked it up during my time in prison. I had no connection with you, I mean her, I mean either of you during all that time. Where were you and why did you not return back home to America after the twins were born? Why did you pretend to be Agnes, even after I came back into the fold?”

“Several reasons, honey. I had already been away at college on a scholarship in the States for two years when you met Agnes and I only returned to Norway for short stays between semesters. I graduated with a top master’s degree in computer programming and I specialised in banking systems and protocols, so I attracted the attention of the CIA.”

“God, even though you were a foreign national, why?”

“Because I was top of my class and wrote a highly regarded paper on banking crime and money laundering. The unit I joined was not just about US national security but international financial security, which has threatened the world’s ability for banks to provide secure commercial transactions. I was transferred to an international division and worked on solving money laundering challenges. However, then I was compromised by a drugs lord when I hacked into his system, after some mole at our end revealed to him who I was. I was about to be reassigned a new identity when Agnes urged me to help her with the birth of the twins. So I took the leave owing me and came over to London.”

“And then Agnes died?”

“Yes. I arrived about a month before the scheduled birth date, to support her in her exercises leading up to the birthing, but the babies arrived three weeks early. That is common in twins and the midwives and doctor were comfortable with their progress. But, Agnes had a weak heart, Daniel. Nobody knew, and the strain of giving birth meant her heart gaven out. They tried their best to save her. But her body gave up and she died, even at the moment Mickie was being born. Poor Agnes, she could never stick at anything, except I think she did try to change her nature for you, until you abandoned her.”

“I suppose I did.” I admit sadly. “What about your heart, are the sasme as your twin?”

“No, my heart is fine. My bosses insisted on being tested.”

We are still holding hands, me and this woman, a stranger who had now confessed was my sister-in-law. “So, why stay here?”

“Two main reasons, the baby girls needed a mother, and who better than the nearest copy of her in existence? My visa from Norway was a non-residential one which would run out in six months and I thought you still had at least a year, maybe eighteen months in prison, assuming you got maximum time off. In fact you ended up doing another three and a half years. So I hid the death certificate until now. It is in that brown envelope with the DNA papers that you decided you didn’t want to see. At that time I was happy to leave it unseen. Besides, the death certificate says that Berta died and Agnes lived, which helped deflect the drug lord that was searching for me. He’s completely out of the picture now.”

“How did you manage to change identities?”

“Well, if you had seen the death certificate in the envelope a couple of weeks ago and asked me, I was under orders to lie to you and say that I threw myself on the mercy of the hospital authorities, who worked an unofficial fiddle, I think you call it, so I that could stay in the UK with the twins.”

“So what are you now going to tell me instead?” I hope my forced smile looks natural, as I wonder who I had been living with for the last six months.

“The truth? The British secret service arranged everything, after receiving a strong request from my boss’s organisation. So the legal paperwork that turned me from Berta into Agnes followed without any difficulties. I had the twins to look after and, although I lived in Agnes’ old apartment, I did have Federal help to pay for childcare when I had to work and your Mum wasn’t available.”

“Out on Agency fieldwork, like the other day?”

“Oh, no Danny. I was never risked on fieldwork. I demanded to be there at the end in Greece, and I did have Freddie and Colonel Forest’s men covering me. The British insisted Forest and his unit were front line, as we had no idea what resources you had in that container, and we only wanted bad guys hurt. Occasionally, when I was based in the States, and only twice since based in London, I would be flown in to check on a tax haven bank, even once to near where we now live, honey,” she laughs, “it’s a very small world.”

‘It is, but did she still call me “honey”?’ I think. ‘And she is still holding my hands. And she called “home” the “place where we now live”.’

“So, you mentioned my Mum earlier. How much does she know of all this?”

“Most of it. She was present at the hospital when Agnes died, of course. She has helped with childcare when she was able to and offered to pay for as much childcare as I needed, which I was able to turn down. The childcare supplied by my bosses had to have security clearance, you know. Your Mum agreed that for my own safety and if there was going to be any chance of you building any meaningful relationship with the twins, it was best that ‘Agnes’ was still around. She certainly couldn’t tell the difference between Agnes and me, and was sure you wouldn’t, especially after more than five years apart from Agnes. At the time you didn’t want to discuss the twins or Agnes, and you failed to answer my letters or any of my sister’s earlier notes.”

“I did read them, every one, even if I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I still have them. I felt betrayed by Agnes, and lumped her in as guilty of betrayal as the rest of my gang. I was angry and those letters made me even more determined to get through this and find out from Agnes who, what and why, but I had no means to do so. Then, I think it was the day after my release from prison, when I met the twins at Mum’s, where I was staying. She was minding them but then had to answer a call go an emergency at work and I couldn’t help getting involved with communicating with the twins as I was in charge of them for the rest of that day.”

“Why do you think we left them with you?”

“Mum and you plotted that?”

She nodded, “And before you ask, Agnes never told me who she slept with and I never asked her. She never could go without sex for long, even as a teenager, so she could have picked up anyone. I don’t think we will ever know who their natural father was.”

“I am their father, the only father they know, and I want to remain doing that job.”

“Good!” she says, “That is what your Mum and me wanted.”

“I will have to have words with Mum, though.”

“Yes you must, because the twins really miss seeing her. But she told us both that she will stay out of our lives until the awkward situation between us is resolved. Is it resolved, or if not, can it be?”

I nod. “Yes it can. We are working on it, aren’t we?” I had been aware of this for a long while.

“I guess so,” she smiled.

“So you are this whizz computer expert for the CIA?” I asked, “Are you better than Freddie?”

“I don’t like to boast, but I found you in Greece, didn’t I?’’ she grinned.

“How?”

“Firstly, we had a GPS device hidden in your shoe.”

“But they took my shoes off straight away.”

“But they were not discarded at first. Your shoes were still in the car for at least an hour. By the time Freddie and I looked for you, noticed you missing, got home, started tracking you and alerted the agencies that you had been taken, your abductors were well away. We were all working on the assumption that Simon was involved, someone who we’ve been chasing for many years. It was thought that your flushing out Motormouth in Spain had stirred his nest.”

“So I was bait?” I ask, “hence the bug in my shoe, or is that all my shoes.”

The second one, honey. We had assumed that your shoes were still on your feet. Almost as soon as we started tracking you, your shoes stopped moving and they were found in by the first pursuit unit in a litter bin, discarded at a garage forecourt when your captors refuelled.”

“Looks like they knew that I wouldn’t need my shoes after meeting Simon.”

“Apparently so, honey. Freddie and I worked together, searching for you on our separate computers. We knew where you had been at every second in the past two hours, your movements recorded, so Freddie hacked into the traffic light cameras until we worked out comparing timings on the recordings until we found which car was the common factor. They almost threw us when they changed cars once, which Freddie spotted. Once we had licence plate numbers, we tracked those plates through police speed cameras fitted with number plate recognition. We found where you went, and discovered which port you had already departed from. Freddie hacked into the CCTV at the port and on playback found the container number and the ship it sailed on.”

“How?”

“We tracked the car into a warehouse and, within ten minutes, out came a truck woth a container on. It was winched aboard a container ship, another three containers piled on top and the the ship sailed within minutes. They had timed your aduction to perfection.”

“It must’ve been tighter than expected as we had our conversation that morning which meant I was ten minutes later getting to the school. So why did they stop for petrol?”

“It was just a top-up, paid quickly in cash. It gave them the opportunity to stuff your coat and shoes in a litter bin while the cashier’s attntion was diverted. Once I had the container number I hacked the bank account of the shipping agents for that vessel and found the manifest was charged to one of Simon Smithers’ many bank accounts, one we knew of in Greece under a known alias. His forger isn’t a patch on Freddie. We didn’t quite know where you would end up, only the port of arrival.”

“So you knew who you were up against. Why didn’t you just let me go when Safe-Sniffer took me?” I ask, “You had the twins, your new identity, even without a Will or even a body to get a death certificate, you would have been better off without me.”

“Because you are not just family, honey, you are the head of this family. I am supposed to be the quiet, timid twin, remember?”

“You seem too self-assured to be that timid, Berta. You certainly made an impression on me in your bullet-proof vest and helmet!” I say, “It’s hard to lose that image of you coming out of that bright light and embracing me.”

“I think I was under the thumb of my sister’s dominant personality all the while she was present in my life. She didn’t allow me to consider doing anything without hearing her opinion. She would vet anyone I liked or anything I wanted to experience. It seemed easier for me to acquiesce as she took all my potential boyfriends and captivated them, keeping them for herself. Now, I prefer to be called Agnes, or honey, and especially ‘sweetheart’, honey.” She smiles in reflective pleasure. “Besides, even my bosses now call me Agnes, as does all my documentation. It would be troublesome to change any of them back, and I am not sure I want to go back. I feel a different person, stronger somehow as Agnes.”

“So, you still work for your bosses?”

“Yes, but only part-time, easily fitted in when you are at school training the girls, honey. Most of it is computer-controlled, automatically sifting through millions of transactions, searching for patterns and reporting back to me any perceived anomalies to investigate further.”

“And you are paid for this work?”

“Yes, quite handsomely, into an account under Agnes’ name. A copy of the last online statement was enclosed in that Manila envelope. You do not quite have to fall back on resuming your criminal career, honey, although my bosses would actually like a word with you when you feel you are up to it. They provided back-up at my request when you were dealing with Kollikov and my boss was impressed with what you and Freddie organised to get Kollikov off your back. I’ve told them you might be prepared to speak with them next spring break.”

“So, does this mean my ill-gotten gains from the Kollikovs are going to be confiscated?”

“Oh, no, honey. As soon as I was settled into the Bahamas, while you were chasing Mikey, I found out about your newly-acquired Swiss bank account and other deposits, I investigated the contents and reported officially that the sources could not be traced to any specific crime or victim. I was allowed to declare no personal interest at that time, as my bosses regarded that on the one hand we had never met before, and on the other hand for most of the preceding four years Agnes and you had been estranged of all contact. Perhaps there are some additional bonds, deposits, investments and deeds that you referred to in confidence with Polly, Freddie and me recently, which may be liable for confiscation but, as I heard about these in family confidence, I could not be expected to report it to any outside authorities.”

“So, where to we stand, er, is calling you ‘honey’ still allowed?” I asked.

“Yes, absolutely, or sweetheart, as you prefer, Danny. Where we stand, you and I, depends very much on you. I have a lifetime commitment to the twins, and now including PJ, so I am not going anywhere, at least not without a fight. But you need to wise up, Daniel and either get with the programme, or … well, none of us want you to leave us, getting with the programme is what we hope for.”

“Something was holding me back, honey.” I said, “It wasn’t just the twins, as soon as I met them I started to get over that. What I couldn’t get over was that you were somehow different and at the time I couldn’t fathom out the why. Now I know. You were a stranger to me. The woman I fell in love with, almost at first sight, or certainly when I danced that first slow dance with, is dead and has gone forever. I do hope that you and I can start over from a new beginning, perhaps go out on a few dates and see where it takes us. What do you think?”

This time she pulls my hands to her lips and she kisses the backs of my hands twice and three times, until her tears splash on my hands.

I lift her chin so I can look into her eyes. “Sweetheart?”

“Yes,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks, “I do like being your ‘sweetheart’, and I wish I had stood up to my sister when you asked me to walk with you and talk where we could hear each other.”

“You were there that first night in the disco?”

“Yes, I was home on vacation from college, but when I went to the ladies’ cloakroom to get my hat, coat and scarf for our walk, Agnes had just finished having sex in a cubicle with several guys, which is why you never saw us together while you were waching me.”

“Damn!”

“I think that’s why she didn’t sleep with you on that first date, knowing you’d realise you were getting ‘sloppy seconds’ and some. She demanded to know where I was going and who with. She forced me to point you out, the biggest and most outstanding guy in the place. That is why I had long been warned off dancing with any of her fellow students, she regarded them as her personal male harem. I hardly knew any of them anyway, as they were from a variety of towns in our region and I was only home briefly between semesters. Agnes was a poor student and only treading water at college and was always jealous of the US scholarship that I won. I had spoken about how well I was settling in and learning to speak and write English, and this made her determined to take you from me, especially when I told her you were such an English gentleman, that you had kept your hands to yourself during our slow dance and that I felt so sae in uyour arms.”

“So you were the twin I danced with, er, sweetheart?”

“Yes, just those four dances. Then Agnes took over and I had to fly back to the States a couple of days later. I was still a freshman and couldn’t afford to miss any college work, the language barrier making it doubly difficut. I didn’t see you again until you turned up out of the blue at our flat to take the twins and me to the airport with the passports that Freddie supplied and waved us off to our new life in the Bahamas.”

“Then, Berta, honey, you are the twin that I fell in love with first.”

I hold our hands tightly together, as I slip from the armchair onto one knee.

“Sweetheart, I know I have been in love with you ever since I met you. Somehow, I was sidetracked along the way by your sister, but we do have our two little girls who made the detour worthwhile. Would you marry me, my favourite twin?”

“Don’t be silly, Danny,” she giggles, the tears drying up, “Honey, every single official paper I have declares that I am already Mrs Agnes Matthews, so we are already married and have the rings, the marriage certificate and plenty of other evidence to back it up.”

“I know, sweetheart,” I reply, putting my arms around her and gently kissing each wet cheek, “But paperwork is one thing. There is something else that we do not have to make us man and wife ... we haven’t got around to consummating our marriage.”

“True, honey, all too true, but please be very gentle with me. My sister never allowed me to have a boyfriend, and I was far too shy for one in my first semester in the US. Once I fell in love with you, however, I have never had the room in my heart to share the gift of my love with any other.”

And that is how I finally passed Go!, collecting a beautiful loving wife and mother to our children along the way.

‘Agnes’, my new wife, who was cute and certainly not dumb.

THE END