The six men walked down into the London Metro system Oxford Circus station during the late afternoon going home rush. As they stood on the platform in the crushing sea of humanity, they casually and smoothly pulled weapons, automatic assault rifles, out from under their coats and began to fire into the crowd. The oldest one, presumably the leader, held an M46 fragmentation grenade in this left hand. He had already pulled the safety pin and the only thing stopping the grenade from functioning was that he gripped the spoon in place. He effectively held a ‘dead man’ bomb. A London Metro Policeman used his radio to call for backup and for the Flying Squad to come armed. As he himself was unarmed, the most he could do, having gotten the call out, was to attempt First Aid to those people around him who were down.

On one end of the platform, a group of school children were returning from an outing to one of the many museums that London is famous for. The teacher in charge of the group was cut down as she tried to move the children out of range. The gunman who shot her saw the children and calculating the high value of their deaths, began specifically targeting the children. Two of the children, both with red hair and freckles, fraternal twins in fact, held hands as they tried to hide deeper into the crowd. The merciless bullets followed them and they entered death still holding on to each other.

He woke up from the dream sweating and shaking. He eyes still watching the children dying and the gunmen gleefully killing more and more innocent people. He stepped into the bathroom to splash water over his face. As he grabbed a towel to dry himself, he reached for his cell phone. Looking through his contacts, he selected a number he had sworn never to call again.

“Kate,” he said without preamble, “It is me. You must not let the twins go on their field trip into London.”

Kate gasped. Hearing this voice, like a ghost from her past, plus the warning it gave, the knowledge that simple statement revealed hit her like an avalanche. “Jonathan?” she gasped, “What do you mean, how do you know about the trip?”

“It does not matter how I know,” John said “Just do not allow the twins to go into the city.”

With his warning given, John quickly hung up before he said more, the tears were already forming in his eyes and his throat was closing up. He threw the now ringing phone across the room and fell back onto the bed.

The six men walked down into the London Metro system Oxford Circus station during the late afternoon going home rush. As they stood on the platform in the crushing sea of humanity, they casually and smoothly pulled weapons, automatic assault rifles, out from under their coats and began to fire into the crowd. The oldest one, presumably the leader, held an M46 fragmentation grenade in this left hand. He had already pulled the safety pin and the only thing stopping the grenade from functioning was that he gripped the spoon in place. He effectively held a ‘dead man’ bomb. A London Metro Policeman used his radio to call for backup and for the Flying Squad to come armed. As he himself was unarmed, the most he could do, having gotten the call out, was to attempt First Aid to those people around him who were down.

On one end of the platform, a group of school children were returning from an outing to one of the many museums that London is famous for. The teacher in charge of the group was cut down as she tried to move the children out of range. The gunman who shot her saw the children and calculating the high value of their deaths, began specifically targeting the children. Two of the children, both with red hair and freckles, fraternal twins in fact, held hands as they tried to hide in the arms of the lone female chaperone. The merciless bullets followed them, hitting both the chaperone and the twins. Mother and children entered death still holding on to each other.

He woke up from the dream sweating and shaking. He eyes still watching Kate and her children dying and the gunmen gleefully killing more and more innocent people. He stepped into the bathroom to splash water over his face. As he grabbed a towel to dry himself, he reached for his cell phone. Looking through his contacts, he selected a number and hit SEND. “I need to be in London no later than noon tomorrow. No, no luggage beyond carry on. Don’t care, just what ever gets me there. K.” He hung up and began to grab clothes from his closet and dresser.

Using his hands to measure along the wall next to his bed, he arrived at a spot and punched the wall with the flat of his hand. A section of drywall broke free, revealing a framed space in the wall’s construction. From inside he removed a Beretta 96, wrapped in an oiled cloth. He set that aside. Reaching in again, he removed two banded bundles of bank notes which he threw onto the pile of clothes before turning towards the bathroom to gather his shaving gear.

John walked down the Jetway and entered the 737-900. British Airways, always the amenities based company, had departed from the standard cattle call configuration of the American companies to the more elegant European Business Class, European Comfort Class, Coach layout. Finding his place in the Business Class section, John stuffed his carry on into the overhead compartment and settled into his window seat.

As he was sitting waiting for the flight to finish loading, an elderly couple stopped in the aisle at his row. The man sat in the seat across the aisle while the woman sat next to John. Turning to look at John she said, “I hope you don’t mind, we both find the aisle seat so much easier to get in and out of.”

“No problem,” John replied, “it’s not like cheek to jowl back in coach.”

The woman chuckled a bit, “yes, these are very spacious. My name is Rebeca, Rebecca Stohle.”

John shook her hand and said, “I am John, Jonathan Nightscreamer.”

The old lady smiled, “Now that is an unusual last name. Is it Native American?”

“Yes,” said John, “I know I don’t look the part but Great Great Grammy married a Niantic man and the name has come down the generations.”

“Well, it is nice to meet you,” Rebeca said, before turning to the elderly man she had arrived with and began the typical ‘couples getting ready for a long flight dance’.

It was at around the fourth hour into the flight mark that the old lady, having run out of the flight activities; eat, have some drinks, scroll through the movies, etc. turned to John. “So, why are you going to England?” she asked, “Robert and I are going for our honeymoon.” She giggled at John’s expression. “We knew each other in High School but went our separate ways after graduation. We each got married, had families and eventually buried our spouses. We met a few years ago at a class reunion and found the feelings we had back in school still were there. We got married last week and here we are, off on an adventure.”

John smiled, “I am happy for you both.”

We are going to Wales, Solva and then to St David’s Head. I have family from my father’s side there. We will have built in tour guides!”

“Wales is great,” John said, “I’ve been a few times to a place near there, RAF Brawdy. It was an old WWII base that had been repurposed by the time I saw it.”

“Did you spend much time there?” she asked.

“No, I just visited it a few times, they had information I needed for my job which was up in the Lakes District of England,” John continued, “I worked for a joint US-UK group doing hush hush type stuff.”

“Oh, you were a spy,” Rebecca’s eyes were glittering as she teased John. “No, no, nothing that glamorous, just information processing, looking at this and that,” John chuckled.

“So, Mr. Spy,” she said with a grin, “you still haven’t told me why you are going to London.”

“As I said,” John began, “I was assigned to a group up in the Lakes District. We worked by ourselves, our packages were usually just sent out without contact from the users. One day we got a notice that an analyst was coming up from London to look at some of our raw data. This was a bit unusual, it sort of smacked of someone thinking we hadn’t gotten it right and they were sending an ADULT to see how the children had messed up. Needless to say, we were not in the best of moods when the analyst actually showed up. The morning we expected ‘Her Nibs’ to show, I was running late. In fact, it was about two hours after my normal start time that I made it into the office. I dumped my gear onto my desk and went into the conference room. Most of the guys were standing around a figure that was bent over one of the plotting tables. My entry caused the figure to stand erect and turn towards the noise of my entry. Her eyes met mine and time stopped. It was like I was sucked into her eyes as I saw her. She had red curly hair, green eyes and freckles. Her lips had started to form a smirk with a look like ‘what is this that crawled out from under a rock?’ when it froze in place. I think we stood there for quite some time because the next thing I knew I was getting a ribbing from the guys about shutting my mouth and such.”

John stopped his story to sip some water before he began again.

“It was an awkward, stressful day, I can tell you. Both she and I were like cats, circling each other, not sure if we were to be friends or foes. We finished up in the late afternoon and everyone scattered; most of the guys had wives or girlfriends local, I was the only one whose wife had stayed in the US. So, I was the obvious choice to squire our analyst to a late tea and then the train station. It was during our meal that we began to talk. Even from the start, we were finishing each other’s sentences. We knew what bit of information the other was going to present before they even got to that point in their thoughts. I was married with children, as was she. She showed me photographs of her twins and I showed her photos of my two boys. We both loved our spouses and found nothing lacking or unhappy in our relationships. She missed her train and it was time for dinner before we knew it. We each had to do some soul searching here. I was ready to file for divorce, not because I didn’t love my wife but because SHE was who I was meant to be with. It was so strange ... and sad. But, the longer we talked about our lives, our friends and our families, it became obvious that we were not going to tear everything down simply so there could be an ‘us’.”

John finished his tale with, “So, we had to ask ourselves, what do you do when after years of life, when a great portion of it has already been spent, you walk into a room and your eyes lock onto your soulmate’s? There stands a person you have never met but about whom you know everything. You don’t even know their name, but you know you have met lifetime after lifetime. This cycle of life, you do not mesh, your lives can not meet. We talked about this for an entire evening and could come to only one solution; we parted. We agreed that we would never talk or meet again. Only if we were both free or one of us were to die would we ever attempt to come in contact again.”

The old lady patted John on the arm and said, “It sounds like a sadly wonderful story. Did you at least kiss her?”

“Just a hug from me,” John replied, “She kissed my cheek when we parted at the train station. Anything more would have led to places we could not afford to go to.”

She nodded off after a bit but John continued to brood. He looked out the window and saw a storm out over the ocean; quite the metaphor for his life at the moment. Finally, just before touchdown, John lapsed into a fitful sleep.

The three travel companions walked down the Jetway into the terminal. John offering an arm to the old lady as her husband shuffled along behind. As they exited the ramp and entered the concourse itself, the elderly woman leaned in to John and said, “I hope you and your lady friend find the happiness you have denied yourselves. True love is hard to find the first time around, much less the second.”

John turned his head towards the elderly lady and whispered, “I am sorry, you misunderstood me. I am not here because it is time for us to be together. I am here because it is time for me to die.”

With that, he walked rapidly away from the Jetway and disappeared from view.

The old woman’s husband came up beside his wife, “What did he say to you, Becky?”

She smiled, “He said he was going to finally be with his soulmate.” With that she swatted his arm, “Come on you old fool. We need to get a move on.”

Liverpool harbor is like any sea port in the world; it is a terminus for trade, transport and a center for mercantilism. Anything and everything imaginable is for sale ... if you know where to look.

John had spent almost the entire day pushing and prodding the mass of humanity that was the real infrastructure of Liverpool. Forget the docks and the cranes and the warehouses. It was the people that made it into a port, and it was the people that watched John as he gently introduced himself to the fabric of the harbor.

A bit after tea time, John was sitting in a pub impatiently killing time before his next pass through the mob outside when a rather large, OK let’s say it ... FAT, man slowly eased himself into the bench set across the table from John.

“Hey there, mate,” he croaked out, his voice sounding as if his throat had been damaged in the past, “Do you mind if I sit here for a spell?” He pulled a large cotton handkerchief out of a pocket and wiped the sweat from his florid face. “God, it’s a hot one today!” he exclaimed.

John was tensing, this was either a nibble from his chumming or a police sting; he would know in the next few minutes.

“I heard tell of a Yank asking about,” said the man, “Said he might be interested in purchases and such.”

John went to full Combat Mode, as they say in the Dinachrome Brigade, when he heard those words.

“I wouldn’t know, friend,” John replied, “I’m just here for a bit of food and a rest, myself.”

“Too bad,” the man said, “I heard tell it was a Yank who knew some folks from the old days. Some friend of a friend type thing.” He idly looked around as if looking for someone, “They said he was all scaly like. Like he was a lizard or something.”