The Cute Meet - Under Fire

So how about this for starters?

Chapter One

The queue snaking ahead of Juliette promised to gobble up the rest of her morning – but, given that it was necessary to take her to France, there was not a shred of resentment in her heart. Not, at least, until the gunmen burst through the double doors behind her.

She’d got to the French Embassy at eight that morning, thinking that the early bird catches a place in the queue reasonably close to the front. No such luck. She learned from the man in front of her in the queue that the first visa applicants had arrived at six thirty if not earlier.

“Sign of the times,” he’d said. “Exponential growth in tourist numbers. That delightful little Greek island with the unspoiled beaches and the undiscovered taverna that serves the best grilled calamari in the world? Forget it. The beach is now knee-deep in Brits, the taverna’s been joined by a dozen others, and they all serve indifferent moussaka and no calamari, because the calamari’s all being exported to Japan.”

“You’re very cynical,” an amused Juliette said.

“A tad, I suppose,” he said.

“And if you’re going to Greece, what are you doing in the French Embassy?”

“I would be going to Greece if I had any choice in the matter…”

“Beaches knee-deep in Brits notwithstanding?”

“… Beaches knee-deep in Brits notwithstanding, because there are still a couple of unexploited islands, with just one or two absolutely deserted beaches.”

“Islands like…?” Juliette asked with a trace, she realized, of coquettishness.

“Now that,” he said with a boyish grin, “would be telling, wouldn’t it? And before I know it, you and your two hundred closest friends would be staking their claim to the last bits of my pristine beach!”
She found herself responding to him with unexpected relief. Relief because he was so very different from Rob, who would somehow have managed to drench every word of their interchange with self-pity.

“So where are you going?” she asked.

“Paris,” he said, as the queue shuffled a foot forward.

“Oh, so am I,” she said.

“But I’m going on business, and doing business in Paris is like going to Pisa without bothering to check out the tower.”

Juliette was about to tell him that on the agenda of her trip was just one word – pleasure – when the three men sporting AK47s burst in through the doors besides the lifts and ordered everyone to get down and empty their wallets or purses onto the floor at their side.

For a moment the words didn’t penetrate. Lie on the floor, thought Juliette – whatever for?

But then she felt herself being pulled to the ground by the man ahead of her – she found herself thinking, stupidly, that she still didn’t know his name. Someone screamed, a shrill cry of sheer terror, just ahead of her in the queue. And suddenly she felt her own heart in her chest beating like a jack-hammer.

A burst of gunfire silenced the scream, and Juliette found herself trying in vain to sink through the institutional carpet beneath her, and thinking (stupidly, again) that surely, surely the French of all people should have carpeted their embassy in a more attractive material than the mottled chocolate brown and beige industrial strength carpet on which she, and the ninety three other victims of the armed robbery were lying prostrate. (She found out there were 93 of them when she read the newspaper reports of the robbery later.)

Her neighbour, the man with strong views about the downside of tourism, was whispering to her.

“They want the cash you brought to pay for your visa. It’s not worth arguing. Just give it to them.”

Juliette found herself scrabbling in her handbag for her purse. She unzipped it and slipped out the wad of banknotes she’d retrieved only an hour before from an ATM.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” she hissed at her neighbour.

“Just put it on the carpet.”

She did. A moment later a hand dipped into her field of view, snapped up the banknotes, and disappeared. She risked a peek upwards, and saw the two balaclava’d men systematically working their way along the lines of slumped bodies, picking up cash at every step, stuffing the money into a couple of bank bags. The third man, also anonymous in a black balaclava, was standing at the counter behind which three or four French officials were cowering, his weapon sweeping nervously from one to the other.

“Did they hit anyone?” she whispered to her confidante whose trousers had risen up on his calves revealing a pair of rather fetching scarlet socks.

“Shot into the ceiling,” he whispered back.

“That was thoughtful of them… What are we going to do?”

“Wait until they’re gone. They won’t be long I shouldn’t imagine.”

And, indeed, they weren’t. A minute later there was a whispered interchange between the three men and then, as suddenly as they’d arrived, they disappeared. A moment later and one of the terrified French officials had pressed a panic button, and an alarm was wailing urgently and dozens of dazed robbery victims were picking themselves up off the floor, complaining in increasingly strident tones about the fact that it was now impossible for them to apply for their visas, and that it was a shame that the French insisted on being paid in cash, and that in any event…

Which last grumble was interrupted by the senior French official emerging from their glass cage and announcing that the visa section of the embassy would be closing forthwith, but that all of the people who’d just been robbed should leave their names and contact details with an official who’d be setting up a table at the lift. The embassy apologised for any inconvenience travelers would suffer from the delay, but pointed out that the robbery was hardly of their making.

***

What do you think? I have, in fact, finished this chapter, which you can read here.

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