Short Story

Top Secret

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Written for Fandango’s Story Starter #176.
Our prompt is “Meet me behind the water tower
at midnight. Come alone and don’t tell anyone.”
This is my highly confidential story!

The text messages started coming in a few hours after my arrival in Kuwait City. They were short and cryptic …. and obviously sent from an untraceable burner phone; my one and only reply failed to go through.

So far all the messages were one sentence derogatory statements directed against the United States government; I was never addressed by name and, since they were rather general, they didn’t bother me too much. Out of the endless number of people with cell phones, these texts could have been meant for anyone.

True, I wasn’t in Kuwait on a holiday; my business was highly classified .… one might even say TOP SECRET. I was assigned a couple of White House security guys to watch my back as well as an over-qualified driver who was ex-Navy SEAL; he drove one of the best-made, high-security American vehicles on the road and doubled as my translator. I was in good company.

My wife was looking for an exotic place to do some shopping; she’d been begging me to get permission from my superiors for her to tag along on this “trip”. I had no intention of bothering The Chief with a personal request. Without revealing a shred of truth, I finally convinced my wife that this was going to be a very boring and routine seminar in Cleveland and her shopping excursion would have to wait for another time. Now, with these strange messages coming in, I was glad she wasn’t with me. I mean, I’m not naïve; I know my family could be in danger regardless of the miles between us but only an idiot would let his wife tag along on a dangerous top secret mission.

Just as quickly as the texts started, they stopped, and after a few days of silence, I was convinced they were just some stupid hoax; I put them out of my head. Then, this morning, another one arrived. It read “Meet me behind the water tower at midnight. Come alone and don’t tell anyone.”

I let that sink in. This was the first time I was given instructions. To be honest, they made no sense and sounded like something right out of a Hollywood movie script; I treated it like a joke. Around 10:45 that night I got a second message; this one got my attention big time and made my blood run cold. There were no words …. just a photo of my wife sitting in our kitchen, disheveled, tied to a chair, mouth covered with duct tape, and looking scared as fuck. Standing next to her was a guy wearing a hood over his face with eyeholes cut out and holding a gun to her head. I could see the terrified pleading in my wife’s eyes.

Almost immediately another text came in with the same message as earlier in the day. The sudden jarring text alert from my phone nearly gave me a heart attack.

“Meet me behind the water tower at midnight. Come alone and don’t tell anyone.”

Shit! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! They had my wife! I didn’t even care who these sons of bitches were. I just needed to know where in the hell to find this goddamn water tower!

I wasn’t supposed tell anyone and I had to go alone. That meant ditching my security guys and my driver. But I needed a hint as to where I was going and how to get there! This situation had suddenly become very personal and I had no idea what to do. At that moment it didn’t matter how well-trained I was or how many missions I had been on. I was completely on my own without a safety net. I quickly Googled ‘water towers in Kuwait City” and this is the image that appeared on my screen.

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.

NAR©2024
#FSS

This is “Secret Agent Man” by Johnny Rivers

Fandango’s Story Starter #176

All text, graphics and videos are copyright for Nancy (The Sicilian Storyteller), The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk, and The Rhythm Section and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.

37 thoughts on “Top Secret”

  1. Uh oh. That’s a lot of water towers indeed. Looks like he has his work cut out for him, and his wife’s life hangs in the balance. Not a good equation at all! Great story, Nancy. I would love to read a sequel to this!

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    1. My first foray in the spy game; it was great fun to write but no future plans as of yet for this guy.

      The song is from Secret Agent, a British show which aired on American TV in the mid 60s. It starred Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, a special operative for M9, specializing in security assignments against any subversive element that threatens world peace. It was very campy …. James Bond in 60 minutes with adverts. John Drake never carried a gun, saying they were noisy and someone could get hurt! He was very adept at using his hands in self-defense.

      The song was probably Johnny Rivers’ best known hit in a string of hit songs

      Thanks, Clive 😊

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      1. I hope there will be more: in the best tradition of books and movies you have set it up for a sequel!

        I looked the song up and found that about the tv show. I don’t ever remember seeing it though, but I did like The Prisoner, which took the John Drake character further.

        As for Johnny Rivers, I don’t think he had much success here.

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        1. We’ll see. It’s not easy dedicating the time to continuing stories.

          Too bad you don’t remember the show; it’s a classic and fun viewing. The Prisoner was excellent and Patrick McGoohan was perfect in the role.

          Johnny Rivers never won a Grammy so we won’t be talking about him on SLS anytime soon! 🤣

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              1. Not by much! And maybe our parents exercised more control. We only had two channels in those days anyway.

                From the little I’ve heard of JR I don’t think I’ll be spending much time digging 🤣

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  12. Secret Agent Man. A great song from, what, 1965/66 — 25 years before anyone even knew where Kuwait. About a decade or so ago, I was chatting with a long-time friend, and she commented about the song. She called it Secret Asian Man. I corrected her, and she corrected me. She was adamant that the song’s title was Secret Asian Man. She finally agreed to do an Internet search. Sometime later, she acknowledged that I was right. She also noted that she thought it had something to the secret war in former French Indochina. I wonder how many arguments she had over the title of the song.

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    1. That’s a funny story, Allen, but in fairness to your friend, the only thing she did wrong was not to get the facts straight before making an obviously erroneous comment. Truth is, Johnny Rivers really does sound like he’s saying Secret Asian Man, which makes no sense at all. The trouble is once you hear it, you can’t not hear it.

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