Michele Bravo Playing With Fire, Ch 3

I.

The next morning went as Michele had imagined it. She and Fitz took a long shower together, then she gave Fitz a massage and he reciprocated, and when she’d finished his massage they’d made love.

Afterwards, Michele said, “This has been a great couple of weeks, Fitz. I’ll have to visit you more often.”

“My door is always open for you.”

“Well, I’ll treat you to lunch at the fanciest restaurant in town, then we’ll start the long drive back to Fredericksburg.”

“Will you stay the night?”

“Depends on when we get there. If it’s early enough, I’ll keep on driving to New York. I’ve got places to go, things to do tomorrow.”

II.

They drove back in companionable silence. Fitz had only signed on for two weeks – that’s all the time he could get away from his job. Michele had intended to spend a couple more weeks touring the area, but the little problem of Gus Keller now took precedence. Although she believed that he was a maverick, pursuing some vendetta on his own, she was not going to stand for him hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles. She was going to take steps to take care of him. All she had to decide was how severe those steps were going to be.

Meantime, she drove without speaking. She had put a CD-R of Simon Bovey’s The Voice of God in the CD player, and they listened to the haunting Australian aborigine music and the tenseness of the story with enjoyment.

While radio drama in the United States had died on September 30, 1962, when the last episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and the anthology series Suspense were aired, in the UK the media had never faltered and indeed was still going strong. And thanks to digital radio and BBC7, Americans and indeed, anyone with a computer, could listen to both old-time and current British radio drama, comedy and science fiction.

One of the authors of new radio dramas that Michelle rather liked was Simon Bovey. She’d enjoyed his Cold Blood very much, about scientists in the Antarctic and the experiment conducted there that got out of hand, and although she’d recorded The Voice of God, she hadn’t yet had a chance to listen to it. (The thing about BBC Radio 7 is that even if you miss a show, it will be repeated three months later down the line.)

The premise of this drama was that a mad scientist (was there any other kind?) had perfected a sound weapon that would bring peace to earth. There was only one problem…using it also caused devastating earthquakes.

Somewhere in her subconscious, as consciously Michele listened to and enjoyed the program, she began to think… Australia. Remote. Very remote.

III.

Modesty Blaise, a fictional character created by Peter O’Donnell in 1963, and long one of Michele’s role models, had a sidekick, Willie Garvin, who was always talking about “the flux.” It was “the magnetic flux about the earth that causes like events to occur simultaneously or in sequence,” and explained coincidences, such as someone thinking of another person whom they hadn’t thought of for 30 years, only to arrive home to find a letter from that person talking about the good old days. In other words, it was a scientific explanation for coincidences.

Such it was with Michele Bravo. The Voice of God had put Australia into her mind, and when she spent that evening in Fitz’s apartment – deciding she’d arrived too late in Fredericksburg and opting to remain the night instead of driving on to New York – she watched a documentary with Fitz that he had chosen, on Lightning Ridge, the most famous producer – and indeed almost the only producer – of black opal in the world. She found the history of opal intriguing, and the mining of it fascinating.

Opal was a living gem, famed for its play of color..rainblow flashes of color which glint when the opal is twisted this way or that to catch the light.



Unfortunately, Americans rarely saw the best opal gems…buyers from China and Asia snapped them up. To get the best, you had to go to Lightning Ridge yourself…which was like a Wild West town – miners gathered in a café or bar, showing the material they’d unearthed that day, and people with cash made their offers.

Michele nodded to herself.

Australia, she thought. That’s where she wanted to go, and that’s where she and Gus Keller would have their little show down. How fitting..a Wild West town for a Wild West showdown.