Chapter Two. More comments please...It's still Leo!

The beach was litter with bathers. Man and women dress in trunks and lying in the heat. White sand stretched in all direction, blue water lapping at the shore. The sun was at its highest, beating the land. Further in-land there was a small city. It was brightly coloured, jammed with people and life. Short buildings rose into the sky. A clutch of new hotels bruised the skyline. The newest - and tallest - was shining white marble. Water splashed over the numerous fountains, greenery pressing in on all sides. In one of the side gardens sat four men. Three were American, one a Londoner. The short man, morbidly obese, with his glasses sliding into his face like wet clay, spoke.

"We have all the time we could ask for."

The Londoner looked at him in ill concealed disgust. "Really? 'All the time in the world'? Frank, if anyone gets wind of this, we'll be done."

A black man leaned forward. "MI6 lost their best man years ago." He turned to the last man sitting at the table. "You arranged it, and you said it succeeded."

The man nodded. "I followed it to the letter."

"'The letter'? What about killing Rider? Did you miss the footnote?" The black man leaned back. "I do not tolerate failure."

A thick silence settled over the group.

Suddenly a bird burst from a bush and the moment was shattered.

The black man nodded to the obese man.

"Kill him."

There was a shot, lost among the gardens and simpering water falling into sun-lit pools.

Frank spun away.

The black man nodded.

He turned to the man shaking in his chair.

"Start now."

Alex stood near the button panel of the lift. His hand hovered next to the emergency lever. Is he had any suspicions about the CIA, he would leave. The place would be swarming with Americans, but he might have a chance. He thought of the training and man power concealed in the façade. Or not.

The corridor opened to a large hallway. 1605. The Gun Power plot. Guy Fawkes tries to blow up Parliament. It was Blunt's old office in London. Alex knocked.

It was not what he expected. He remembered Joe Bryne, the director, like the cooling turned up one notch too high. Bryne also liked large windows and had a stocked bar in one corner. But Bryne was not sitting in the derector's chair.

Tamara Knight was the last person Alex expected to see.

He paused in the door-way. "Have you been promoted?"

She glared at him. "Is seems you've had a bad time since we've last met Alex."

Alex walked in and sat in one of the available chairs. "Are you not pleased to see me? I've come with high recommendations."

Tamara leaned back in her chair. "The Central Intelligence Agency prides itself on not working with hired guns."

Alex sighed. "So that's a no to my job offer, I guess?"

Tamara nodded. "I'm sorry. I can arrange for some transportation though. Where are you headed next?"

Alex shrugged. "Australia. CAD might need someone."

She perked up. "Really?"

"Yes. I just work my way through all the honest business, and if there's none open, I'll go below again."

"I can offer you a short term contract…I was about to speak to CAD myself."

Alex could tell there was a story behind this.

"Why? Is this another three way?"

Tamara nodded. "Remember the threat your company got early last year?" Alex nodded, so she went on. "We've-MI6 and the CIA- have been looking into it, and dug up a few things.

Remember how Scopria had the snakehead under their thumb and controlled all profits coming in and out of the Pacific South? Someone is trying to restart the failed enterprise. There have been loads of actively in the West Coast and Indonesia, as far up as China and Japan. The tryads might have some communications, trading up to the mafiya and east to France. From there it spreads north and south. Down through Africa and the largest blood diamond mines in the continent. And that north line? Right through 10 Downing Street."

Alex struggled to wrap his mind around it. "What about here? The Americas?"

"We're untouched, but it's only a matter of time. Three weeks tops, Mexico will be pushing drugs as far north as Candia and we'll have immense gang civil war on our hands. At best. At worst, this could tear the world apart."