This one is a bit longer than my last effort, and be warned that it has a plot of sorts, and leaves you with a bit of a mystery at the end.
Not much sex but a bit of titivating just to keep you interested.
I could have put this somewhere else than Loving Wives, but I sort of like it here.
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I'd like to introduce myself but I think it might not be advisable at this stage. I'd like to be able to tell you the name of the eastern European country this report revolves around, but for me, my life is far too precious. Too precious to risk my name to being added to the list of people that had died already in the name of democracy... Apparently!
Let's just say that I am a political journalist, and that you may well have seen my face on current affairs programs if you watch the BBC or possibly even CNN. That or maybe read one of my articles in one of the more serious newspapers.
Nuff said!
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My story starts when I applied to the appropriate government ministry for an interview with the boss man there, to discuss the unsettled political situation in one of the countries bordering Russia. A country that had originally been part of the Soviet Empire, but that had split off some time after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and was then enjoying, if that was the correct description, an uneasy courtship with the West. Unsure which way to lean, but attracted by the European Union, and in particular by the carrot of membership of currency union. This was all of course before the Euro lost much of its glamorous appeal.
Half expecting to be diverted to the top man's number two, at least till they found out what angle I was pushing, I was surprised and just a little disappointed to be given a time and a place to meet a man I'd never heard of, and for that matter couldn't find any immediate record of.
Strange, but such is the world of both politics and journalism.
Mr Smith, and yes that was John Smith of course, turned out to be a man of around my own age, let's say latish thirties or so, and not the dowdy office bound type that I'd expected. In my profession you learn to size up people pretty quickly, and I got the impression that he was more a man of action perhaps, and a man that women would naturally feel attracted to.
"So you want our opinion on the current state of affairs over there do you," he stated rather than asked, getting straight down to business in his clipped British Public school accent.
Yes," I replied. "It would be a good idea to start off with the British Government's real opinion rather than just the official line that you've been giving out."
"So that you can misquote us?" he came back, the smile on his face telling me that he wasn't that serious, but that even so, I had to be cautious.
"I have signed the official secrets act already," I informed him, though I was pretty sure he'd already be aware of that. "You can invoke that if there's something that the ministry wants airing unofficially."
"I think you can take that as read otherwise you wouldn't be here," Smith went on. "And there is something you could help us with and it could be to your advantage."
"I'm listening," I confirmed my willingness, pretty sure that it wouldn't only be to my advantage..
"Are you recording this?" He asked, and I confirmed that I was, a little surprised that he raised no objection.
"How would you like a private interview with Edin Pjanic?" He asked, my eyes raising at the prospect of actually meeting the very elusive and super rich number two in the country in question. Not his real name of course for reasons mentioned above.
"That's nigh on impossible of course," he shot my hopes down in flames, before I'd even formulated my answer. "But a meeting with his wife might be."
I've years of experience of keeping my feelings in check, and am pretty good at it. But a meeting with ... Let's call her Helen shall we ... Well that shocked me. Shocked me to the core.
"They say she's American," I probed, the stories and rumours surrounding the stunningly beautiful Mrs Pjanic spinning round my head. The prospect of such an exclusive story, causing me involuntarily to lean forward in my seat towards him.
"Thought that would get you," he grinned back at me, knowing he had my rapt attention. "The beautiful and mysterious Helen Pjanic, so called wife to Edin Pjanic, sometime mistress to the president and possibly half their senior government, and probably, currently, the most sought after woman by the world's eager press. They do say that she holds the country's destiny in her hands. Beauty and power in one such person is intoxicating, especially when nobody seems to know where she came from."
"I noticed that you said 'so called wife to Edin Pjanic'," I pointed out, never one to miss a nuance in general conversation. "Surely they are married?"
"They got married," Smith confirmed emphasizing 'got', but offering no more.
"So she is Mrs Pjanic then?" I probed cautiously, wondering where on earth this conversation was going, though never in a million years would I have guessed where it was about to go.
"Possibly not since she's still married to me," Smith stunned me with. "I'm not aware that either of us applied for a divorce, so the question of whether or not she actually is Mrs Pjanic or not, is therefore debateable."
The next few minutes passed in a bit of a dream as I tried to take in the implications of what he'd just told me. The information I already had would make a world exclusive. But I had nothing other than Smith's word, and I knew he could disappear into thin air if he wanted to.
I needed more.
I was being set up and we both knew it, but this story was too hot to let go of.
"Let me tell you a story," he said at last, and I shut up, placing my recorder out in front of him, making sure that he knew he was giving me this information freely.
If I knew then what I know now, then I would have known why it didn't worry him.
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Smith's story, verbatim, as I recorded it that day.
Helen and I met at university when she spent a year on secondment there from her college in USA. We fell in love and married soon after we both graduated. As you know I work for the British Government, and her for an American organisation in London, but in a similar field to me.