Intrigue - Part 2.2: Nothing to Look Back to

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By reading any further, you state, that you are at least 18 years old.

The following content contains violence and situations, which might be offensive for some readers.

So be warned and do not read on, if James Bond like situations do not appeal to you.

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Thinking back reminded him of his childhood, all his fake identities he had to take and memorize since then. But at least now, one fake facade was gone:

Lucas was no more.

No more use for that hated name another man had chosen for himself. The burden of that connection now was gone together with the name.

He had spent years to get used to this identity, but now, after all his fake identities for MI-5 he was free to go back to his own identity again or whatever he chose for himself.

Bad memories connected him with his own name. His relationship with his father had been bad and had even become worse when he grew into adulthood. His invented background had been so much more pleasant in that case than the truth. Bird-watching with his father, a thing the father he grew up with would never have thought about to do with him. What a waste of time, at least with the early error of his wife. The marches had been his hiding place from his father and he was glad his father had never found out where he went when he escaped from home for a brief period of time.

His real father he had never known. His stepfather, with whom he grew up, had been a strict Methodist priest in London. He had been harsh and any time ready to provide corrective methods to get his ‘son’ back in line. The more he got punished, the more he had tried to fight him.

But the last straw that had caused him to leave his family behind had been the audacity of his father to plan his future. His job, wife, family, place to live, all had been laid out in front of him and he had refused. He had hated the strict rigors of growing up under the pious priests’ dictatorship. Everyone in their small community knew about his every move, his every slightest and assumed misbehavior, for which he had gotten heavy beatings at home. His mother had tried to take his side in the end, but an enormous fight between her and his stepfather had occurred about his future, while he was gone from the house.

But as soon as his mother had died, he was gone too. He had not even waited till the funeral, where that pious priest would have held the sermon and pretended how much he had loved his dear wife, who had died from inner bleedings. The doctor could not prove that it had been because of a beating, as his mother had refused to testify and had pretended she had fallen down the stairs. But he knew better.

The more he had been punished, the more he had fought back. He never again would submit to the strictures of another dictator again, whatever flavour the dictatorship might take on the outside. He had sought to fight dictators of the same kind, wherever he found them.

But his stepfather had also been a good school to prepare him for the tortures during his imprisonment in Russia. He knew they needed him to survive it and succumbing to it would not lessen the punishment. During the punishments of his stepfather, he had learned to detach his mind from his body, a technique he had been forced to learn during his early years to bear his life and now was never likely to forget. But it also had taught him, that he was strong enough to survive.

All those ugly memories came back with his name, Al Delarmy. He had been called Al, because his stepfather had the same first name, Daniel, and to avoid confusion, Al had to swap to his second name Alistair, when his mother married when he was 7 years old.

After he ran away to start university, his stepfather had never tried to find him or to get in contact with him again. He had feared what he could reveal about the death of his mother.

When he tried to finance his studies, he soon came into contact with illegal circles, where his nickname became the laughingstock of all connections. The new ‘Al Capone’. But their smuggling had not involved alcohol, but slightly more elaborate drugs. They were trading with all kinds of drugs, not only for the consumer market, but for the medical market where much higher prices could be gained for impeccable goods. He knew some of his contacts dealt with organs, but that was not his choice. Involving people posed much too high a risk of discovery. He had gone for the really high value material.

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