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Austin Macauley Publishers - Sim Moy

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135 pages

English

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Shrinking back into the thick Central America Jungle in an effort to obscure himself from the incoming gunfire, Christian Simpkins desperately tried to recall the details of his job description at the Foreign Office. His errand to Belize was to simply liaise with a man acting as a mediator in discussions with neighbouring Guatemala, as there was a bit of a to-do regarding some recent border skirmishes. The events that soon unfolded, encompassed huge wealth to grinding poverty and orderly civility to outright anarchy. Traffickers, smugglers and bandits vied with overly enthusiastic security services. Jungle greens were the dress of the day, and among this chaos stood one nervous young man in a white linen suit, looking up to the sky above. A grand design was up there, and therein lay hope. A conceptual novel woven around a novel concept. A sequel to Simpkins previous' adventures in the Sahara.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	31 janvier 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528945134
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0175€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Sky High
Sim Moy
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-01-31
Sky High About the Author Copyright Information Procurement and Ancillaries Hotel Paradiso Commander Ted Earning Lunch The Ranch A Meeting of Sorts Nigel Nothing In the Dark The Sortie Ladysmith Barracks Avionics Channel 42 Whitehall’s Bane Navy Stratonauts Open Day Sixteen Miles Another Chapter Counterstroke Cruz Memorial Uniformity Recognition Holiday London, Late January
About the Author
Sim Moy is a London-born man with a well-travelled and diverse background. He has been writing for almost a decade. Sky High is Moy’s third book. It is a sequel to his previously published book Waters’ Edge . Its genre is not specific, although it has been described as a humorous adventure thriller. Sky High is set in present-day Belize and concerns the events of a hapless British Foreign Office employee, Christian Simpkins, who struggles hard to avoid an international embarrassment to Her Majesty’s Government. Murder, intrigue and more murder hinder his reluctant efforts. Hopelessness abounds until a fluke of circumstances creates an opening for Christian Simpkins’ strangely tuned mind.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Sim Moy (2019)
The right of Sim Moy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788783095 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788783101 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528945134 (E-Book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Procurement and Ancillaries
Christian Simpkins eyed the wall clock above the receptionist’s desk. It was already a quarter of an hour past his appointment time, he had been here before and Sir Jeffery Pollock was prone to making his subordinates wait. Christian, though, was not really perturbed, for, despite his lack of years, he was well acquainted with the hierarchy game and knew that in all probability he would have to wait for fifteen minutes more. He envisaged the very same scenario being played out in countless other Whitehall departments. He smiled to himself and sat back on the little sofa, his movement caused the receptionist to glance up from her screen, she caught his eye for a second, but he, like her, registered no emotion. He knew of her, Ms Frost, she was called, although the array of rings on her left hand suggested that she was a Mrs. She was middle-aged and cursed with an overly sincere outlook, however, she was also known to be coldly efficient to the extreme. Something pinged on her desk phone, again she looked up, but this time she emitted a little cough to attract his attention.
“Sir Jeffery will see you now! Go straight in.” He nodded and flicked a glance back at the clock, twenty-five past the hour, his guess was five minutes out.
On entering the large bright woody office, he looked across to the back of a tall grey-haired figure, hands behind his back, gazing out of the window.
“Morning, sir,” said Christian, in an effort to start the proceedings, whatever they were.
“Ah, Simpkins. At last, good of you to come.” Christian slightly shook his head, he had been waiting for twenty-five minutes, but the man still seemed to infer that he was late. Sir Jeffery Pollock turned and indicated that he should sit on the far side of a ludicrously large leather-topped desk. Without a word, Christian sat and listened as the man paced back and forth from desk to window.
“Right, Simpkins, listen up, I and others believe that you have now finished your stint in Western Sahara, it’s all been a bit of a breeze for you since you have been on loan to the Foreign Office. Your position there as special envoy, has, as you know, been re-allocated to one of their own people, therefore you are back in the fold, here, in Ancillaries and Procurement, where the real work is done. You have been away for nearly two years, Simpkins; would you like to remind me of what this department actually does?”
“Yes, sir,” he said lazily, “we sort out other people’s cock-ups.” The pacing suddenly stopped and the silver-haired man turned to look at the younger man seated in front of him.
“Correct, Simpkins, I couldn’t have phrased it better myself. Cock-ups, and now we have another, and this one we think, is right up your street.” Christian looked back up to the man, distinguished, classically educated and quite charming by appearance, but he knew his ways, he knew his conniving methods and if the truth be known, he couldn’t stand him. However, he also knew from experience that he shouldn’t be under-estimated. The man sat and opened up a heavy ribbon bound file, he glanced back at Christian and chanced a smile.
“Look, Simpkins, I understand your reticence, sitting where you are, Manzania was a bit hairy, it was our first venture into the region, Western Sahara, but to be honest, it all ended splendidly well, did it not?”
“I nearly died out there, sir, several times.”
“Yes, I am aware of that, risky stuff what?”
“Risky! Huh, it was bloody lethal,” replied Christian laconically.
“Yes, I suppose I must agree, you were sort of thrust in at the deep end.”
“Deep end…” His voice regained some of its emotion. “Deep end! You said I would be part of a team, I was alone, a one-man team with a thick file of misinformation, ill-funded misinformation, I may bloody well add.”
“That is in the past, no point in dwelling on it, you are alive and here, and Her Majesty’s Government was saved from a most embarrassing upset. Now, enough of what has passed, there is an irritating little conundrum in Central America about to unfold. Coffee…?” Christian took a deep breath, he hadn’t finished bemoaning the Sahara, he had so much more to say, but it was all in his final report. He gave up, sat back in his seat and nodded affirmably for the coffee. Sir Jeffery took this as a starter for him to continue.
“Belize, Simpkins, Central America, I won’t go too deeply into the history, nevertheless it was, as you probably know, a British colony, the British Honduras to be more precise. It is now a protectorate, one of our very few left, and it is, as you may be aware, the home of a permanent military contingent. Our problem there is Guatemala, quite an old problem really, they don’t seem to like us very much, but that’s beside the point. The issue in question is the border that we share with them, it is just one long continuous argument of contrition.” Christian cocked an eyebrow, his years in the diplomatic service gave him a good knowledge of border protocol.
“Mmm…I’m surprised, sir, that border will be long established, well over a hundred years I should imagine. I don’t see how it could possibly be contested after all that time?”
“Quite so, and normally that would be the case. When it was first drawn up by our surveyors, British that is, the region was sparsely populated, and so they didn’t really give much thought to it. Normal stuff, using natural barriers, rivers and plateaus to define it.”
“Yes, that’s quite normal and any other bits would have been sorted out by precedence, decades ago.”
“Correct, Simpkins, you are clearly well acquainted with the generally accepted view, something in your training paid off.”
Christian ignored the suggested slight and took the piece of paper now being offered to him.
“That, Simpkins, is a copy of the original frontier drawn up in 1893, can you spot the cock-up?” Christian cast his eye over it and handed it back.
“Yes, the border is drawn with an overly thick line, quite common really, but on that scale, it would be about 10 miles wide. One would normally accept the centre of it as the border.”
“Exactly, except about fifty years ago when that was implemented, it clipped a few communities in half and divided a fair amount of privately owned land on both sides. This new border line was heavily contested and consequently never ratified to this day. So now, the internationally accepted land-sat frontier with its nice neat fine digital line is literally miles away from what was originally drawn and consequently contested. The river Gonzo, for example, meanders in and out of both territories, it is navigable and therefore rivercraft are re-entering each other’s territory every time they go around a bend. The aforementioned should by rights be an easily surmountable agreement especially if one’s diplomatic cordial is healthy and ours is not. In short the big fat pencil line still unfortunately adheres. It is nine miles wide and one hundred and fourteen long. People…rather unsavoury types.”
“Presumably, you mean bandits?”
“Bandits, yes, drug smugglers, people traffickers, and worse, now infest this, this, I think ‘corridor’ would be the most appropriate term. Nobody really knows where to draw the line. If, Simpkins, our security forces confront some armed gang, for example, they just claim to be Guatemalans in Guatemalan territory and vice-versa with Belize, of course. It’s a bit of a nightmare all around, we had some success at control with the use of helicopters and light aircraft and then a few, on both sides, were lost to missiles, shoulder-borne weapons and suchlike. Now, I’m afraid, it’s back to armed patrols. We have even tried border markers, lots of orange poles, but these were pulled up before we even completed the task. And there you have it Simpkins, our dilemma, tricky stuff, what?”
“Yes, sir, but this is a classic diplomatic conundrum, both sides just have to thra