The Isle of Olympia. Andreas Karpasitis
and courage. Even when his blood alcohol level was through the roof, he could focus on a fraction of a millisecond. Yes, he hadn’t been active in the field for the past few years, but he still hadn’t lost his edgy and sometimes dangerous courage.
“Guys,” Murphy’s voice sounded from the depth of the room. “Calm down, let’s talk about this.” It seemed that James would not have to show his long-ago acquired skills from his life in the MI6 tonight as Murphy walked up to the table.
“Saved by the goddamn bell,” he jokingly said to the guard with a smirk on his face as he winked at Murphy. He slowly started to sit down. Without a moment of hesitation, the guard grabbed him from the collar as he tried to pull him back up. Murphy, in quick, defensive gestures, pulled the guard away and looked at James straight in the eyes.
“Let’s all keep calm now,” he continued as his head moved from one person to the other numerous times. He knew now that it was time to flash his credentials, one of his least favorite things to do. For him, it was weakness; the inability to properly handle a situation. He slowly pulled his badge and gracefully flicked it open in the direction of the guard.
“We just need half an hour, nothing more,” Murphy stated. “The bar is almost empty. I will maintain control of the situation,” he said with unflinching determination.
“As long as you keep him under control, you can have as long as you like, sir,” the guard nodded, as he took a step away from the table.
For Murphy, this was the usual reaction. If his badge was involved, he could ask for a glass of water and get a bottle of Chardonnay instead. Not always. He could think of multiple times that being a CIA agent brought the worst out of the situations, but the positives far outweighed the negatives.
Murphy took a seat across the table from James as he checked the surroundings cautiously. The car outside the hotel, that seemed to follow Ethan, smelled like trouble. Instinct was his most trusted feeling. The bar had a couple of guests sitting in the opposite corner, getting ready to pay the bill.
James’s face was buried in his computer screen, the light bouncing off the dark circles around his eyes in the dimmed lit bar, completely ignoring Murphy.
“Hello James.”
“Murphy. It’s been a long time,” James replied, his eyes still on the computer screen. “So, you are here to make me change my mind, right? You want to interfere in something that’s out of your jurisdiction?” James paused as he shook his head. “The CIA never ceases to surprise me. What if I told you, Murphy, that if I shared all the information I have collected in the past decade, it would completely change the way you look at your government; you will abandon your blind and biased beliefs. You will lose your loyalty to an agency you sacrificed so much for.” James looked at Murphy as he picked up his glass of whiskey. “Well, Mr. Murphy Coleman, you are already here, so you’ll have to listen.”
James knew that Murphy’s history with the agency was long. The agency was his life. He sacrificed his somewhat short marriage due to his blind patriotic loyalty to the CIA’s war on terror and the current conflicts with the Russians. It was an endless war against everyone that posed a real threat. After his divorce, he became so recluse that his social life completely collapsed; work was his only and true devotion.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” Murphy said to the bartender.
“I believe we should cut to the chase, Mr. Coleman.”
“Of course, sir, let’s do so,” Murphy replied, half curious to see what James was obsessing about and why he was there wasting his precious time.
James pulled up a photo from the numerous folders lying on the table. Carefully, he placed it in front of Murphy.
“August 31st, 1997. Paris, France.” James pointed his finger to the photograph, a snapshot from a surveillance camera.
Murphy rolled his eyes as he leaned in to have a closer look at the photo. The picture showed the crashed Mercedes Benz of Princess Diana. James’s finger was pointing on the motorcycle stopped next to the completely destroyed car. The passenger of the bike was leaning his head through the wreckage.
“There were a lot of theories back then. The driver was drunk, the reporters caused the crash; a possible assassination. The royal family wanted her out of the way, and they wouldn’t accept a possible marriage with a Muslim. Or she had damaging information for the Royal Family. So many theories.” He then added, “Sightings of the motorcycle were also mentioned. That didn’t take a long time to die out, even though there were actual references by the sole survivor of the crash.”
Murphy took a sip from his whiskey, which the bartender just placed on the table as James pulled a few more photographs from the envelopes. They were still security camera snapshots, but they looked different, they had a different color, different feel. James shuffled around the photos, giving Murphy time to make sense of what they were depicting. He eventually pulled them towards his chest, hiding them entirely.
“But then I came across this,” James said with a sense of pride. “I’ve started looking into this sometime in two thousand and ten or eleven. The exact year is a bit of a daze. It was sometime after our meeting. Back then, I didn’t have touchable proof; they were just assumptions. I thought I was getting there, but weirdly enough, I would always come to a dead end. Like someone was trying to stop it. That’s when my life also started to follow a downward spiral: accusations, rumors, past mistakes. I was losing leads, documents. That’s when I started being paranoid and extra careful. Since 2011, I’ve been to Paris more times than I can count, trying to piece this thing together. Last year, my last visit there, lasted for around six months; I went through everything and everyone.
“I tried to follow the bike, but I couldn’t; it was almost impossible. But I could follow it up to a certain point, and that’s where I focused all my energy. Trying to figure out what the people on the bike did next. And after fifteen years, it’s pretty hard, believe me. People die, people forget, people just let go. But if you persevere and you keep asking, you will get the information you need. Even if sometimes it’s just by pure coincidence.” James punctuated his point by placed the photos on to the table, stacking them in an orderly fashion. Murphy looked at the first photograph. It showed the bike in a small Parisian alley. It was dark, but you could clearly distinguish a motorcycle.
“I kept hanging out by the area close to where the bike was first sighted. Walked around the streets, went to the bars, went to the restaurants,” James added, seeming to intensify Murphy’s realizations that the man sitting across him not only was an alcoholic but had also developed a frightening obsession.
Conspiracy theorists abounded, but James was a special case. Murphy continued to listen reluctantly and with the apparent unwillingness to take things seriously.
“One day, I went to a café and I ordered an espresso. It was one of these small one-person coffee shops. You know, where they have a couple of tables, and they have gourmet, roasted coffee. Well, the owner, around his fifties, started chatting with me. One thing led to the next, and I briefly mentioned my concerns and what I was looking into. I also showed him the snapshot of the bike, and then he said this,” James paused, and took a fairly big sip from his whiskey, “he said this exact phrase ‘oh, yes, the bike, I remember this bike, it stopped here, in front of my shop.’”
James watched as surprise colored Murphy’s face. He knew the same things were running through Murphy’s mind as when James had this revelation. The impression was that all possible scenarios had been checked at the time of the accident. Murphy leaned in closer with interest.
“Oh, someone seems intrigued,” James pointed out before continuing. “At that point, I was overwhelmed and excited. But that didn’t stop me from still searching for a camera around the small alley. I turned to see if the café had a camera. As expected, it didn’t, but to make sure I asked the man sitting next to me if they had one. He said no. I was getting disappointed, as this could have been a huge lead, something that no one else had come across before.” James sipped more of his whiskey; taking each down just like water—one