The Negotiator

Marty

Harriet decided to work with me, though I was sure she still had reservations. This, of course, would be because of her training as a psychologist and her further training as an intelligence officer. Take nothing on trust I had been told repeatedly in training. She would have been taught the same. I would have to be permanently on guard with her, I knew her suspicions had not been allayed. She had taken a huge risk with her approach. If she really believed I was a murderous psychopath she could have been making herself my next target.

My next assignment was routine stuff. I watched a suspect and followed the man for a week. It was difficult in some areas and several times I had to break contact and bugger off when he went into some dangerous areas where the Provos ran patrols and sprang roadblocks.

Eventually, I got a tip and traced him to a farm in Armagh. I got as close as I could, doing a drive past. Luck was with me, I saw him go into an outbuilding, looking around furtively before he entered.

We gave the job to the Special Air Service who hid in a ditch and watched the place for three days, photographing the people and vehicles that came and went. After the raid, we were surprised at the number and sophistication of the weapons the cache held.

Someone was managing to get an awful lot of brand new American weaponry into Northern Ireland and we had to find out who and how and close off the channel.

‘How are you at accents Jack?’ Harriet asked me one day. She probably knew I was the mess mimic and often played a drunken Scotsman to amuse my mess mates when the spirit took me.

‘As good as any, better than some’ I answered, wondering what was coming next.

‘Ever do an American one?’

‘No, never.’

‘Think you could?’

‘Dunno Harriet. What’s this all about?’

‘The Provo’s arms are mostly American, which is no surprise, but how they get into the province and who is doing it God alone knows. We need to find out.’

I thought about it for a while. It would be bloody difficult to acquire an American accent good enough to fool Americans and I said so.

You probably won’t have to fool any Americans, Jack, just the Provos.’

She was obviously talking about the infiltration of the Provo organisation. Another difficult task fraught with danger.

We had long ago abandoned trying to acquire a Northern Irish accent. The nuances were endless with slight, but detectable differences. Even a few streets difference could be detected by the native ear. The very few resources we’d ever had on the inside were all native Northern Irish, even then they tended to have been quickly found out. The Provos were not fools.

‘You have a plan?’ I asked.

‘Half a plan at the moment, but HQ is desperate to cut off the supply of arms and have given us the go-ahead to explore the possibilities.’

I was intrigued, it was a known fact that the Provo’s had sophisticated sniper rifles and machine guns, too. Fortunately, they weren’t brilliant at handling them yet, but that could change at any time.

‘What have you in mind?’ I asked, curious, despite myself, though I was not going to volunteer for any half-arsed mission.

‘We have had a tip from the Guarda about a certain couple who have been raising suspicions for the last year. The husband is suspected of being brigade commander in the Provo’s. He comes north at least once a week buying cars for his business. He meets with some unsavoury characters, some of whom are known members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He does some womanising here then goes home.

In Eire he keeps his nose clean, mixing with politicians and the like. Brendan Hanrahan is a member of an upmarket golf club and a member of several charitable organisations. All the trapping of a bloke with things to hide. He also imports cars from the States for his flashier clients. He has connections in Boston. We think he could be a good lead.’

‘What about the wife?’ I asked.

‘Patricia, she’s called, a member of the ladies who lunch brigade.’ She showed me a picture of a very handsome woman in her early thirties, smartly dressed and coifed in the latest fashion. ‘She’s into good works, too, though not as many as Brendan.’

‘So,’ I asked, ‘what’s the plan?’

‘We’ve acquired the services of a professional voice coach, an American lady who trains actors at Elstree Studios, among other places. I’ve arranged for you and Robert to meet her to explore the possibilities.’

I was wary but agreed to an initial meeting to explore possibilities. Sergeant Robert Johnson (Jonno) was the other guy on the hit team. He was a damn good man who was developing into a first-class operator. We got along great, however, he was a broad cockney. My accent was neutral, having been brought up in an orphanage with kids from every corner of the country then I joined the army’s Junior Leaders at the age of sixteen and again met with a multitude of different accents.

Martha Eldridge was a feisty West Virginian of twenty-five, medium height, willowy, with small pert breasts and a smile as wide as the USA. She had deep blue eyes set in a long face surrounded by shoulder-length mousy brown hair. She was not immediately attractive on a physical level, but she had an impressive bearing and dressed to show her figure to best advantage. She walked with a smooth, cat-like grace that made it seem like she was floating.

‘Hi’, she greeted us shaking hands vigorously ’I’m Martha, though my friends call me Marty.’ I took to her instantly, her openness and genuine smile winning me over.

Marty demonstrated how a voice can be changed by mimicking an Oxford English accent to perfection. I was amazed at her versatility as she did Scots, Welsh and even Irish accents with effortless ease. She did this not to show off, but to demonstrate just what could be achieved with practice. She also agreed that doing a Northern Irish accent that would fool the locals long term was not worth trying.

We set to work but after a couple of days Jonno dropped out, his cockney accent shone through everything he tried, poor sod. Then, for the next four weeks, I strived to understand vowel sounds, sentence structures, colloquialisms and a ton of other stuff.

It looked promising, so they sent us to the States where we stayed with a cousin of hers called Bruce Eldridge. She told him I was an up and coming actor training for my big break for a TV part for the BBC.

I learned about American football, baseball, basketball, the political system, the makes and models of cars and a thousand background details. I learned to talk, think, eat and act like an American. It was damned hard work and she kept me at it eight hours every day, Sundays included.

Before we came home, Marty and I went for a celebratory meal at an upmarket restaurant. The food was superb, the wine even better, and we both got a little tipsy. She placed her hand on mine ‘Do you not find me attractive, Jack?’ she asked in her forthright way.

My answer was hell, yes, but Harriet had told me bluntly ‘do not seduce her. Keep your horny hands out of her knickers, OK? She’s costing us a fortune and she’s here to work.’

Marty knew I didn’t have a girlfriend and her relationship with an Elstree cameraman was coming to an end. I told her of Harriet’s strict instruction.

‘OK then’ she said, grinning from ear to ear, ‘in that case I’ll have to seduce you.’

I didn’t need much seducing. It was wonderful. I hadn’t been with a woman for months except for one trip to a massage parlour when I was drunk. I found that superficial and deeply unsatisfying.

With Marty, it was a revelation. She had a snake-like flexibility that beggared belief. She writhed against my body like a thing possessed. Sliding down me, taking me into her mouth, I had to use all my self-control to avoid being premature. I used my tongue on her, flicking lightly on her engorged c******s. She gave lusty little yelps of desire, gyrating her hips faster and faster.

When she was whimpering and digging her nails deep into my buttocks I moved to mount her, but she pushed me away.

‘I’m the seducer, right?’ she said, her eyes glowing with wild passion. She climbed onto me and took me inside. ‘I’m going to f**k your brains out boy until you beg me to stop.’

She did too.