The Spy Who Hated Me!: A James Spillaney Casefile

By Shaun Chapman

James Spillaney, part spy, part detective, passing life in a world where he doesnt fit in. It was the 1950s, heralded in by the Roswell crash in 1947. In a world where science had suddenly exploded onto the scene with so many technological advancements, it was hard to keep up. Its a world of controversy, deceit, and lies (and that was only from the politicians); of valve phones and hydrogen-powered steam engines thundering around the globe on a super rail track system started by the Germans before the war, the International Train Transport System (ITTS); and of art deco edifices reminiscent of the 20s. But underneath it allunderneath the shining metropolises scattered around the earth, which were examples of mans ingenuity and brilliance of mindwas an undercurrent of iniquity and murder, controlled by a few or, as James puts it, the pond scum of the universe.
Spillaney will do everything he needs to resolve a case, and if that means bustin some nuts, then so be it. He has more enemies than hairs on a camels back; their weapons of choice are bullets, knives, bricks, and machetes. He has an ex-wife, who hates him and wants him dead, the Spy Factory wanting to torture and murder him, a criminal organization wanting him removed permanently and an assorted bunch of undesirables, lunatics, and corporate thugs. They all step over the line just to make his life miserable. Not that James could give a damn. He just takes life one day at a time. As he puts it, the world is not sane enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514424216

Shaun Chapman

Shaun Chapman is a committed conservationist and chairman and founder of RAPTOR, a conservation and anti-poaching organization. He is the author and creator of The James Spillaney Casefiles, The Rocky Adventure Series, The Solar Princess Series and many other titles. He was born in Wales and spent his life globetrotting, from New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa. At present he is working on new book titles and focusing on a series of environmental books and the ROCKY’S WORLD TV series. He is also the editor of RAPTOR – Leader of the Earthwize Generation, an online environmental magazine. The author has spoken at over two hundred schools on conservation with ‘Rocky in the Wilderness’ being a firm favorite with educators as The Rocky Adventure Series imparts environmental principles through the weave of the storylines.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Shaun Chapman.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015918526

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-2423-0

                Softcover        978-1-5144-2422-3

                eBook              978-1-5144-2421-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/08/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

715460

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 The Case

Chapter 2 Anna Katrina

Chapter 3 Business as Normal

Chapter 4 The Hunt for Brackenhorst

Chapter 5 The Paris Caper

Chapter 6 The ITTS to Helsinki

Chapter 7 On to Java

Chapter 8 The Baduis

Chapter 9 Death, There’s Nothing Quite Like It

Chapter 10 The Discovery

Chapter 11 Jack Trumps King

ABOVE TOP SECRET

BIOGRAPHY JAMES SPILLANEY

BIOGRAPHY SHAUN CHAPMAN

To the director of the Spy Factory, my very own Moriarty; the boys of WEB; the team members of RAPTOR, Dennis Udoh, Pitshou Mampa, Savvas Nathaniel, Christopher Tonoh, Ntweng Titus Makhubedu, Itumeleng Setlogelo, Chris Stevens, Tony Zappala, Adriano Mazzola, Fred Wade Adams, Kadiri Alli, Issofa Njikam, Davies Bassey, Stan Green, Mandla Nikie Sibanda, Humphrey, Peter Federl, Peter Benniman, Justin Benniman, Jason Benniman, Desmond Odemuyiwa, Dumisani Phakati, Thor, Odin, and the All-Father; my four-legged companions, Rocky and Snowy; and, of course, Natalie Portman.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dennis Udoh; without his efforts, The Spy Who Hated Me! and James Spillaney’s casefiles may never have seen the light of day. Pitshou Mampa, whose artwork has brought the dream to life.

Rocky, my Staffordshire, who gives me the strength to carry on.

My father, Cdr. Stanley William Chapman, who was on my back every single diurnal period to finish that ‘damned Spillaney book.’

And my inspiration, Albert Einstein.

INTRODUCTION

D etective James Spillaney inhabits the seedy underbelly of the 1950s, a world of valve phones, microvalve computers, and the International Train Transport System (ITTS), a hydrogen-powered super train system that operates trains around the globe and a fleet of giant eight-engine Dorniers to transport customers over the oceans. Each ITTS station is an art deco masterpiece, designed in the 1920s and representative of each country’s original people.

The cities of the world are shining examples of man’s ingenuity and shades of metropolis, where old meets new in a miasma of culture and cooperation. But behind this facade lays an undercurrent of evil and wickedness. It is this that Spillaney is up against, with many a sworn enemy to combat.

CHAPTER 1

The Case

T he name’s Spillaney, James Spillaney. I had the kinda life others dreamed about, but I abhorred. Sure, it takes me to a lot of places, and I meet plenty of dames and have a license to thrill, but well, today was just not my day. I had big trouble with a capital ‘T,’ and it wasn’t a dame called Tasha or Tina. No. It was the kinda trouble that could get a man killed.

It all started as I went down to get some cigarettes at the local drugstore. I pushed the door open and looked around. No spies. I was in luck. Ever since that fateful day at the Coffee Factory, I had been hounded by a gaggle of spies from our local Spy Factory, all wanting ta get a piece of me. At that, I take issue, especially since my ex-wife had already bitten so many chunks off there wasn’t much left. I did a quick scan, nobody but an old man grabbing a bog roll and a box of laxatives, no doubt looking for a good time later on in the day.

I paid for my cigarettes and newspaper and then headed out the door to relax in a nice hot bath, with a fag hanging out the corner of my mouth and the newspaper hanging in the tub. Well, whaddya know, but this brick came flyin’ past my nut with but an inch to spare. Jeez. I dropped the fag I was about to light and spun around, only to be met by an ugly tattoo-covered fist owned by a guy who needed a good haircut and the rings pulled out of his nose.

I don’t get stunned easily, and this ugly guy’s best shot didn’t even make me blink once. Heck, I wasn’t even mad, just pissed off that I’d just trod on my now-flattened fag. At least Penny at the Coffee Factory wasn’t as bad-tempered as this psychopath. Anyway, he came in for another shot, but my foot stopped him in his tracks. He spat on my favorite shirt, the rat.

With my shirt covered in spittle, I wondered whether it would stain. I gave the guy a steely look and pondered whether he’d come closer and meet Mrs. Thumb and her four daughters. They were a pissy lot and just loved to rough and tumble once in a while.

*     *     *

At the Coffee Factory, Penny had asked me to deliver a note to table 6. Well, being a swell gal of pleasurable proportions, I accepted the request and did as I was bid. However, the foreign-lookin’ man at table 6 turned out to be something more than a piñata-carrying Mexican, eating a bowl of chilies and sporting a mariachi hat. The guy in a heavy dark coat and thick accent looked more like a card-carrying cleaner from the KGB. I gave him the note and then returned to my mocha cappuccino and took a sip. Yeah, he definitely wasn’t Mexican. I ordered another slice of cheesecake and stuck my fork hungrily into it as soon as it touched down on the tabletop. The not-so-looking-Mexican had already made like the wind and blown, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a guy taking too much interest in me. It’s either he had his eye on my strawberry cheesecake or he was eyein’ me. Now I ain’t that sorta guy, and I don’t take kindly to people eyein’ my food. Maybe he was hungry, but either way, I kept my eye on him, hoping he’d also blow.

Being a private dick, you have to take note of people and things; otherwise you’ll land up in the River Styx with a pair of concrete boots on your way to Valhalla. In my line of work, the guys who don’t follow the minutia generally finish their lives quite quickly or else end up wasting their final days staring at the bottom of a bottle of tequila or vodka. I’m strictly a coffee kinda guy; if it ain’t got caffeine in it, I ain’t interested. On reflection though, maybe I shouldn’t have given the note to the Mexican, but what’s done is done. I paid the bill and left through the front door, followed by either a hungry fairy or a spook.

I walked over to my old Studebaker and opened its door. The guy following me started talking into his sleeve. A spy! So now I knew they must have been keeping the Mexican under surveillance. What a fool I was. I’d been suckered into some kinda game.

I threw him an upraised middle finger and climbed into the Studebaker. I looked into my rearview mirror and noticed a black sedan pull up next to the surveillance operative. He opened the door and got in. I turned on the ignition and pulled into the road from the parking lot. Slight drizzle started to spot the windscreen, so I turned on the wipers. The black sedan followed me all the way home. Jeez, I thought, Either they like my pretty face or they like my Studebaker.

I drove home and parked the car in my numbered garage and got out. Switching on the light, I walked around the car to make sure no one had tampered with it. I noticed one of the tires had a large nail stuck in it and was going flat, an old spy trick. I’d have to get it fixed tomorrow, as I was in no mood to replace it. I walked round to the entrance of my tenement building and noted that the spooks had pulled up onto the other side of the street and were watching my every move. I cast one last glance over my shoulder and then pushed the key into the foyer door, unlocked it, and strolled in.

Walking up the stairs to my apartment, I wondered what the Mexican was up to and what damned fool at the Spy Factory had ordered the surveillance on me. Personally, I prefer to be the one doing the surveillance than the one being spied upon. As soon as I got to my door, I knew something was wrong; some jackass had jimmied the lock and then forced it. A bunch of amateurs, I thought. Well, they won’t find much other than some not-so-interesting cases I’d picked up during the past week. One was an abduction by a UFO. Just kiddin’. Maybe he’d found another broad to keep him warm at night or got tired of his wife’s naggin’. Heck, I didn’t have the faintest idea. My client was a swell-lookin’ dame, and he’d have to be a fool to drop her. He was a scientist working on some advanced projects, so it shouldn’t be too hard to trace him and haul his ass back to the loving arms of his ball and chain, unless, of course, he truly had been abducted by little gray men and was on the other side of our galaxy. If that was the case, I’d really have a deuce of a time bringing him back to face the wrath of his spouse.

A DC-3 droned overhead as I stood by the window. The car outside, keeping me under surveillance, was gone. Ever since some UFO had supposedly crashed outside Roswell in ’47, things had got pretty weird. Sure, they all said it was a weather balloon, but we were in the ’50s now, and science had blazed a screaming trail since that incident and accomplished much in a very short period. I know the Spy Factory plane had infrared cameras and backscatter X-ray, meaning they could see me clearly, even my dinner of two hours ago plastered over my stomach lining, if they really wanted to. I picked up the stereo arm and placed the needle in the grooves of a Frank Sinatra long-playing record. Yeah, things change, but the more they do, the more they stay the same, just like politicians who seem to change with regular rapidity. But at the end of the day, you just change one bunch of scheming kleptocrats for another bunch of kleptocrats.

With Frank Sinatra playing in the background, I sat down in my favorite armchair and picked up some case files, a few of them marked Top Secret. I wondered whether the spooks had overlooked them or just left them as evidence after taking photographs. There was an interesting picture of a secret flying submarine and some photos of possible alien spacecraft far out in space. Yes, this was going to be a doozy. I wondered who the crazy one was, Mrs. Brown for suggesting it or me for believing and taking on the case. Anyway, it was all involved in her husband’s disappearance.

Another case I was working on was an abalone-smuggling racket involving the triads of China. I had earned my stars in Old Chinatown and knew every Yin and Yang there, but I still had no leads. My informants were too frightened of what might happen if the gangs found out; still, I had other avenues and was gradually closing the gap and bringing an end to this ring of terror for all abalone kind.

A case I had turned down recently was one offered by a Mr. Yong. He had plenty of greenbacks, but I figured it was supplied by a Joe in Hong Kong, a gang member. It turned out I was right; some guy had made millions upon millions of U.S. dollars by crooking them. He had manufactured a rhino horn substance and then set the compound in a rhino horn mold. It was so realistic it fooled the Chinese triad gang. He decided to disappear and get out while the going was good before it was too late. None too soon by the looks of it, for a short while later, they found out and were after his blood. I wasn’t interested in the millions or in fact where he had gone. Good on him, I say. Anybody who deals in rhino horn needs to have their face ground into the tarmac and left to rot in a bloody pile.

Helicopters had started to fly overhead with regularity. Jeez, this was all I needed, I thought. I had bills to pay and work to be done, and now, shucks, the Spy Factory was on my tail for some supposed infraction of the passing of messages law. I imagined myself on an island far away in the South Seas, not the flea-bitten backside of the world where I currently resided. I closed my eyes and slipped into the land of Nod. Yeah, today had not been such a good one.

*     *     *

The psychopath with the tattoo-covered fist pulled a half-sized brick from his right pocket. Crikey, what is it with this guy? He’s the kinda’ guy you’d take out into the desert, cover his head with treacle since I wouldn’t waste good honey on him, and leave him for the ants. I stepped behind a pillar so he couldn’t get a clean shot with the brick. Irritated, he started hurling insults about me stealing his house and car and other things, which sounded like he’d been briefed by my ex-wife and Ali Barber, my ex-employer. If anybody can insult you about your age, it’s your ex-wife. And for lies, just ask an ex-employer; he’ll have plenty to tell. Just at that moment, the local constabulary was driving past, so I stepped out into the road right in front of them and held my hand out for them to stop. They could do nothing less; it was stop or drive over me. So in short order, my assailant was thrown in the back of a police van and carted off to jail. I pulled out another cigarette and tried to light it. Damn, my last match broke. This just was not my day, and it hadn’t even started yet.

*     *     *

Opening the door to my office, I strolled in, sat down on my leather and wood chair, stretched my legs, and thumbed through some papers I’d thrown down on the desk the day before in my in-box. One case took my fancy, a case of espionage. An ex-paratrooper had joined a technology company after leaving the service and inadvertently opened a can of worms. He had discovered that the Spy Factory was keeping the business he worked for under surveillance and was committing espionage by stealing proprietary information and then selling it to other companies involved in the same business. Unfortunately, this den of iniquity was circling my not-so-favorite spies and the organization they worked for. There would be hell to pay if their senior controllers found out, and they would be forced to keep their agents on a tight leash, unless they too were involved.

A lot of advances in science had taken place since ’47, a tremendous amount. Handheld valve phones were one example. Similar to a regular telephone and a walkie-talkie, they came into use shortly after the first satellites started orbiting the Earth, sending and receiving via giant radio masts. But even with all the scientific advances, life had taken a serious turn for the worse, an ominous one too.

The Shining Ones, as I prefer to call them, had come out of the closet and were brazen about their intentions of taking over the world; it had been said a secret alien base had been uncovered below Area 51 in the desert and that a combined operation between the U.S. government and the aliens was in progress. A ring of alien spacecraft had also been discovered circling our solar system, presumably to keep the bad alien influences out or to keep us in. I mean, what possible harm could we do? Anyway, I knew things picked up during the course of my work that I wasn’t meant to, and besides, could it be possible that the missing scientist had ended up in space? Do I believe in such things? I don’t know. Does the pope have an upside-down cross on his throne? Yes. Shucks, the world was getting weirder and weirder by the minute.

Another Spy Factory helicopter droned overhead. Yeah, things were getting out of hand by the second. A short while later, a Beechcraft with a red underbelly and castrated engine, which made it near silent, flew over. I thought, Boy, they really do have a thing for me.

The morning had been rough for me. I had been yelled at so many times on my valve phone. I would be a millionaire now if each call had cost a nickel. Jeepers, what had I done to deserve all this turmoil, other than to be born? Anyway, I decided to take Tramp for a walk and clear my head. Tramp is a short-haired Alsatian of sorts. He is not mine. Just to let you know, in my line of work, I never know where I’ll end up next, maybe Singapore or in a casket six feet under. So from time to time, I borrow a friend’s dog, just to keep up the appearances that I’m partially sane. Tramp is pissy, real pissy; he doesn’t like people much, just like me. He had a rather disastrous puppyhood, being kicked and beaten and left on a trash pile to fend for himself. When Gogo found him, he was skinnier than a death row prisoner after being planted in the ground for six months. First time I ever took him for a walk, we found a pool of blood. Now Tramp is a good tracking dog, but then again, maybe Gogo hadn’t fed him that morning. Anyway, he followed the trail the victim had left all over town until we came across a derelict house, which stank of armpit odor, much like my place after a week of noncleaning. Tramp and I followed the blood up some rickety old stairs. In the bedroom on the top floor, we found the vic in blood-soaked sheets. The guy was bleedin’ out so fast. I called the local cop shop from my valve phone to arrange a cleanup crew to sort the fella out. Detective Monare turned up and questioned him about the perps. After that, the medics took him to our local hospital, a once well-functioning institution, which was now in a state of disrepair. If you ever wind up there, don’t count yourself lucky; more people die in the queue during one week than on the sidewalks of Johannesburg in a month. And that, my friends, is no lie. From that day on, Monare had viewed me as a good friend. It took Monare only three hours to find and lock up the man’s attackers and solve a particularly violent attack. The vic wouldn’t have to worry about the perps for another ten years before they got out of prison.

I have a few friends but plenty of enemies; true friends I can count on one hand. Monare is a swell guy, one of those rare honest, decent ones, but on the other hand, there are some really rotten ones out there who hate me to bits. Why? I don’t really know. I guess I just have a pleasant disposition and courteous nature. One cop in particular I detest; his name is Thabo Rouge. I was at home one night when he and his thugs thought they’d have a little fun and shake me up. They knocked at my door, and I answered. I told them to get lost in no uncertain terms. They didn’t appreciate my response and said they would kick the door down if I didn’t open it. I asked if they had a search warrant, and they said the bullets in their guns were the only warrant they needed. What about identification? I asked. What’s that? They laughed. Either open the door or we’ll put some bullets into the lock. I looked out the window and saw their official vehicle. So I opened it, and whaddaya know, I had this automatic rifle stuck in my face with some trigger-happy lout about to pull the trigger. Rouge, of course, delighted in sticking his long-barrel pistol in my stomach and cocking it. I asked if they’d like a cup of coffee or a croissant, but they declined. Personally, I’d have liked to see Rouge hanging upside down from his toes with a croissant stuck in his mouth. Yeah, that’d do me just fine. They searched my pad and found nothing. I mean, whaddaya expect to find? Little Red Riding Hood under the coffee table?

Rouge and his merrymen left after giving me a little present, the butt of a rifle in my face. I said, Are you sure that’s enough? He answered with the boot of his foot in my gut and then closed the door behind him. Polite pig! I mouthed. I washed the blood off my face and went to bed.

Guys like him are a dime a dozen, cops ready to take the handouts from any criminals who’ll offer. Technology may have advanced, but people, well, they seem to have taken an alternative route, and I ain’t talkin’ Route 66. Democracy had turned into demockery, and the politicians, I can only term them kleptocrats, out for everything they can get their greedy little mitts on. This town is full of them. They hold political office and make up laws that suit themselves. They should have shares in every large corporation or else the corporations can’t operate; they make sure of it, inciting the people to rise up and strike. Their pockets are like black holes with the singularity sucking in every dime, which even looks askew at