Deceit. [COMPLETED.]

Chapter 77

"Richard."

Geoff told me the news.

'Apparently Uri landed in Tokyo this morning and went straight to work. His secretary told Lillian that he would be in a meeting all day and so if she wanted to speak to him then please try again tomorrow when he will not be so busy.'

I was speechless. It made not the slightest bit of sense at all.

'What we were able to find out though,' continued Geoff. 'Was that he made two calls after you left him. The first to a man in Germany, and my girl is putting a trace on him as we speak but the second was to none other than your friend Richard O'Donnel.'

So he was involved.

It seemed as though we were getting further and further away from the truth and as we took to our seats, Geoff tried to remain optimistic.

'Don't worry about any of this,' he grinned wrestling with his safety belt.  'These are just teething pains. Time is the key to all of this; for him just as well as us.   Whatever he has planned will centre around you. He is just as much a slave to the clock as we are, only his hands are tied. He now has to wait for you to arrive, while we on the other hand can use this time to plan our coup de gras .'

He sat back satisfied with himself though how we were going to formulate a plan from thirty thousand feet stuck on a Boeing 747 I had no idea.

Geoff read my thoughts and turned abruptly towards me.

'Look. We have two ways of approaching this mess; positively or as you seem to be so apt at doing, wallowing in your own excrement.' 

His face softened as he could see the hurt in my eyes.

'While you are down in it, all you end up doing is being distracted and you end up reacting purely to what happens. It never works. You have to leave the past where it is. Treat it merely as a book you have just read - an autobiography about someone else for example and once you've finished then you need to put it back on the shelf to collect dust because believe you me, if you don't – if you can't extract yourself from your emotions and failings, then you will never be able to move forward.'

He talked well into the flight and he was right of course. He had made a living of dealing with his emotions and if he was as successful as he claimed to be, then who was I to argue. But my memories were still very raw and in the end, we agreed to get some sleep.

The lights dimmed and although I slept for a while, my slumber did little to rejuvenate my tired spirit.

We landed just after seven with Geoff as bright as a new penny while I looked a hundred years old, dishevelled hair, blood shot eyes and clothes that looked dirty.

I sloped off to one of the complimentary shower rooms while Geoff found a table round a breakfast bar. He called Lillian and asked for two things, to get Richard's number, both house and mobile, and to instruct her to remove the money from the Cayman Island account. He asked for my card and relayed all the details and then poured himself a cup of tea.

'Sometime today he is going to check that account. He will expect it to be gone and so it will be.' 

He raised his eyebrows a few times and smiled. 

'What we have to do, at the very least, is what he is expecting and then we will have breathing space to do what we want.'

Lillian had suffered the same fate as I had during the night with little or no rest but hers was through her own doing because she had been hard at work trying to find out everything she could about our man in Germany.