Fallback (The Adventures of Eric and Ursula Book 3) Read online

  The Adventures of Eric and Ursula

  Book 3 – Fallback

  A.D. Winch

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  This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service (UKCS):

  Registration No: 292412

  Published by A.D. Winch, 2014

  1st edition

  Text copyright A.D. Winch, 2014

  Book Cover image copyright K.J. Winch, 2014

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  eReader Edition, Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Contents

  Chapter 1 - Alone

  Chapter 2 - Imprisoned

  Chapter 3 - Escape

  Chapter 4 - A Good Chat

  Chapter 5 - Home Again

  Chapter 6 - Messages, Money and the Mob

  Chapter 7 - Sasha

  Chapter 8 - OSS Progress Report

  Chapter 9 - Unsettled

  Chapter 10 - The Operating Theatre

  Chapter 11 - An Old Friend

  Chapter 12 - Schwarzkopf Discovers the Truth

  Chapter 13 - Lepley, Mordovia

  Chapter 14 - Correction Colony for Foreign Citizens

  Chapter 15 - Captain Hudson’s Contacts

  Chapter 16 - Passport Control

  Chapter 17 - Changing Sides

  Chapter 18 - Troubling Events

  Chapter 19 - A Painful Shoulder

  Chapter 20 - Welcome to Alien Country

  Chapter 21 - Reflections

  Chapter 22 - Fallout

  Chapter 23 - A Friendship is Born

  Chapter 24 - Ingrid’s Diary

  Chapter 25 - Hola

  Chapter 26 - Saving a Fish

  Chapter 27 - Release Date

  Chapter 28 - Crazy Talk

  Chapter 29 - Johan’s Plan

  Chapter 30 - Three Days to Go

  Chapter 31 - Stake out

  Chapter 32 - A Box of Ants

  Chapter 33 - Recriminations

  Chapter 34 - A Trade

  Chapter 35 - Magic Carpet

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  About the author

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  Preview of Book 4

  Acknowledgements

  Note from the author

  ***

  Chapter 1 – Alone

  Heavy snow had been falling all night, and Paris was almost silent. The city was covered in a white sheet that made the tourist attractions even more picturesque and the Eiffel Tower look like a Christmas tree. Roads were impassable, and the snowfall had ground the city to a halt. Even the road clearers were cosily tucked up in their beds.

  Behind a closed down Chinese restaurant, snow drifts filled a narrow alleyway. The drifts hid rubbish bins and cardboard boxes and made it look empty, but it wasn’t.

  The cold woke Ursula. She opened her eyes and tried to move her head, but the cardboard roof was resting heavily against the helmet she wore. She stretched out an arm painfully and pushed the cardboard doors open. She looked outside at the snow and shivered.

  On her first night living on the streets, a homeless man had told her to wear every item of clothing she owned. The only clothes she had were the ones she was wearing - her black motorbike leathers and the blue helmet. He had also told her to stuff screwed up paper between the layers of clothes and her skin. He claimed that it would prevent her from freezing to death. She had followed his advice. It was uncomfortable, but she was still alive, so obviously he had been right.

  Ursula wondered how many more months or weeks or days she had still to live, even if she got through this winter. According to Professor Larsen, she would die before her thirteenth or fourteenth birthday. Her thirteenth birthday had already passed so that meant she had less than a year left.

  Ursula’s teeth started to chatter and her stomach rumbled.

  I’m going to die now if I don’t do something, she thought and decided to get up.

  The cardboard box she was in had been squashed under the weight of the wet snow, and it took her a few seconds to slide out into the darkness. As she stood up, the snowdrift dropped and crushed her makeshift home.

  She shivered again and decided to move just to keep warm. The Parisian streets were deserted, and she trudged through snow up to her knees. Ursula had no destination in mind as she walked. She was too sleepy to plan or to focus on where she was going. Her only desire was not to freeze to death.

  After a while, she found herself looking up at the Stade de France. The last time she had been here was with Eric but now he was gone. Her head drooped, and her eyes filled with tears. The thought made her sad but, in her current situation, every thought made her sad. She decided to walk to her grandparents’ apartment, but there was no enthusiasm as she stepped awkwardly through the snow.

  It wasn’t long before she approached the block where she had grown up. The new main entrance was locked, and she couldn’t open it. Even if she had owned a key, she knew she couldn’t go in and reluctantly walked away. The snow was still falling heavily, and Ursula picked up a handful. Her mouth was dry, and her stomach still grumbled. She lifted the visor, held the snow to her lips and took a bite. It wasn’t unpleasant but neither did it quench her thirst or make the hunger go away.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a drunken voice in French.

  Ursula looked around and saw a homeless man curled up in a bus shelter staring at her. He had a matted beard and was wearing so many clothes that it was impossible to tell if he was fat or thin. Ursula thought he looked like the anti-Father Christmas. He even had a sack in a shopping trolley beside him.

  Ursula ignored him. She needed some kind of liquid inside her, even if it was snow.

  “I said, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, ma fillette,” slurred the homeless man. “It will make you even colder and no knows what is in that snow. With all the pollution in the air, you’re probably eating poison. All the big companies and governments, they don’t care about the environment,” he rambled, “as long as they can make money and see their profits go up, they’re happy. They don’t care about good people just trying to make it through each day. They don’t care about you and me. They’ll use us, screw us and then spit us back out again.”

  Ursula ventured nearer to the bus shelter but kept far enough away in case she needed to run. The man sat up. He was animated; his face kept twitching, but he seemed harmless enough.

  “I won’t bite,” he said as if reading her thoughts. “Come and join me and I’ll give you a drink that will warm you up.”

  Ursula accepted his invitation and warily joined him on the bus shelter’s bench. Since being on the streets, she had discovered that people were far more unpredictable and, in some cases, more dangerous than she had ever experienced.

  The smell of the man was quite strong, but Ursula knew that her own aroma was not much better.

  “And do you know the biggest problem with people being screwed by the big companies and the government?” slurred the man, swinging this head towards Ursula. “I’ll tell you. Everyone always accepts it.” He burped loudly.

  “Accepts what?” asked Ursula.

  “What the big compa
nies and governments do to us. Nobody ever says, ‘no, what you’re doing is wrong.’ Nobody ever fights back and do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they fear they’ll lose everything and end up like us. And here’s another question for you. Do you know what the irony of this whole situation is?”

  “No,” said Ursula.

  “It’s that the only people who have nothing to lose, who could fight back, are me and you. And what are we doing? We’re sitting in a bus shelter in the driving snow just trying to keep alive.” The man paused, lost in thought and then thrust a carton into Ursula’s hand, “Drink!”

  Ursula took the carton and, without looking at what it was held it to her lips. The smell of his unpleasant breath wafted out of the opening. She tried to ignore it and took a swig. Acidic red wine hit the back of her throat, causing her to choke a little before she handed the carton back.

  “What’s your story? How did you end up in Saint-Denis?” asked the man. “I don’t see many motorbike riders around here without motorbikes.”

  Ursula didn’t reply. She was unsure of what to tell him, if anything.

  “Come on, I may die of cold before you begin!” he goaded jovially.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Let me start then. My name is Claude,” he held up a hand covered in old gloves. “Shake it then.”

  Ursula did as she was told, “Ursula.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ursula. How long have you been living on the streets?”

  “I’ve lost track of the days to be honest. About a month, I think.”

  “How are you?” Claude asked, with a warm smile. “There are a lot of crazy homeless people and a lot of unpleasant people who like to pick on us.”

  Ursula thought about the question. It was the first time that someone had asked her how she was since she had arrived back in France.

  “I could be better,” she replied and began to cry.

  Claude laughed but not unkindly, “Couldn’t we all. Why don’t you tell me about it? Might make you feel better. I’ve been told I have a good ear, but it’s just a shame about the rest of me.”

  “It’s long,” replied Ursula slowly, looking up her grandparents’ block.

  “I like long,” grinned Claude, taking a swig of the red wine.

  He handed it back to Ursula, who took another mouthful without thinking.

  “Please begin at the beginning and don’t stop until you end at the ending.”

  Apart from her grandparents, she had not spoken to anyone about how her life had changed so dramatically over the last eighteen months. Since they had gone, she had spoken to no one.

  “Tell me,” demanded Claude. “I won’t judge you. Who else are you going to tell? Paris will wake up soon and move us on. Let’s make the most of our time.”

  Once Ursula started, she couldn’t stop. It felt good to be speaking to someone, and she ended up telling Claude everything. She spoke about coming to Earth from a space station and how she could do things ordinary people couldn’t. She spoke about being raised by her grandparents, about winning the puzzle competition and the ten thousand Euros prize money. She talked about Eric, how he was a spoilt brat but how he had saved her on numerous occasions. She explained that she had tried to save him from a secret US agency called the OSS but had failed and that, in the process, Andrea had been killed and that Alexander had vanished. She told him how she had got back to Paris and that this was her home, but she was homeless.

  At this point, Ursula began to cry again. She took another drink of the wine, and the tears flowed. The last month was so clear in her head but so hard to talk about. Everything had gone from very bad to even worse the moment she had returned to the apartment block in front of her.

  The door to her grandparents’ apartment was locked. Ursula found the spare key under the plant pot opposite. She turned it silently in the lock. The door creaked as she pushed it open, but no one stirred inside. She walked in and then gently closed it behind her. Next to the door, she saw the letter she had sent to her grandparents. Ursula smiled. All that mattered now was being home. Everything else she would push to the back of her mind until she told her grandparents.

  Her grandparents’ bedroom door was shut, and she could hear the welcome sound of snoring. She debated whether to wake them but was seriously worried that she would give one of them, or possibly both, a heart attack if she walked in now. Instead, she opened the door to her bedroom and went in.

  Nothing had changed. The wardrobe door was still warped, her posters had not been touched, her old desk was clean and her bed was neatly made.

  Ursula lay down on the pink sheets and whispered to herself, “I’m home.”

  She was smiling from ear to ear.

  Something didn’t feel quite right, but Ursula was too happy to care.

  Tiredness gripped her but in spite of her best efforts, Ursula could not sleep. Her eyes were closed, but she was too thrilled to be back and her mind was racing. She debated whether she should get up and change out of her motorbike leathers. However, she was worried that any sounds she made may wake up Mémé. It was great to be home, and she was determined to return to a normal life. There was so much she had to tell her grandparents, and she was not sure how they would react to the news about Eric, Alexander and Andrea. They may say that they should do something to find Alexander and Eric, but what could they do? Both had vanished – one voluntarily and the other under duress.

  Eventually, the sun began to rise, and Ursula waited until she heard movement from her grandparents' room. A floorboard creaked, and she heard a yawn but it did not sound like Mémé nor Granddad Benjamin. Ursula quietly stood up. In the first light of day, her room didn't look quite right, but she had other things to worry about and crept to the door. It was slightly ajar, and she peered through the gap.

  Across the hallway, her grandparents’ bedroom door swung open and a large man stood in the doorway. Ursula stopped breathing and silently stepped back. She did not move a muscle until the man had walked into the living room. Only then did she breathe again and dived under her bed.

  A conversation from the living room floated into her bedroom.

  “Anything to report?” asked one male voice.

  “No. I have already radioed into HQ to tell them,” replied a different man. “I also asked Hoover if there was any point in us staying here but he told us to stay put.”

  “I’ll be honest - it’s not the toughest assignment I’ve had while working for the OSS.”

  “Do you think she’ll turn up?”

  "The Black Queen? Possibly, where else she is going to go?”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t come back to this dump. Anyway, over to you. I’m tired, and I need to sleep.”

  Ursula heard footsteps coming her way. They walked past her room to the front door. The key was turned in the lock and then removed. Ursula heard the footsteps entering her grandparents' bedroom.

  How had she got in last night without being heard, she asked herself. She had no answer, but it didn’t matter. Somehow she had done it, and now she had to leave the same way.

  She checked her pockets for the door key but couldn’t find it. As quietly as she could, she slid out from under the bed and checked the sheets for the key. It wasn’t there. Either it was in the hall somewhere, or she had left it in the keyhole on the outside of the door. If Mémé had been here, she would have been furious.

  Her bedroom door was still ajar, and she approached it cautiously. The view through the gap was not wide enough to see the front door. She opened it further until she could see down the hallway. The front door was shut; there was no key in the lock, only her letter on the table and nothing on the floor. She was trapped.

  Ursula stepped back into her room and closed the door. She had to get out quickly before she was found, and there was only one way she could think of.

  The window was stiff and squeaked as Ursula opened it. Many years ago, Granddad Benjamin h
ad fitted a block of wood to the ceiling so the window would open no more than a few centimetres. Mémé had insisted upon it, after seeing a young Ursula fall from the balcony. The gap was not big enough for Ursula to squeeze through. Instead, she climbed onto the bed to look at the wood. A rusty screw secured it, and it did not look very stable.

  Clutching the block in her sweaty hand, Ursula began to turn the wood. It moved slowly. Every time it squeaked, she stopped, but thankfully no one came. After a number of turns, the wood came free, and dust fell onto the mattress.

  The window blew open, and Ursula managed to catch the frame before it banged against the wall. She rested a pillow against it and climbed onto the window ledge. The wind blew her into the room, but she refused to go back that way.

  Ursula looked down, and a terrible thought dawned on her. She had never attempted to get down this side of the building before. There were no balconies that she could use and no drain pipes to hold onto. Ursula looked down at the window ledges and breathed in. Seven floors were a long way to fall, and she took her helmet from inside the room. The protection that it would provide if she fell was limited. However, as she placed it on her head, she felt that it was better than nothing.

  Ursula twisted around until she faced her building and looked back into her bedroom. She slid her hand down the window frame and gripped its base. The wind whipped around her again as she placed one leg and then the other over the ledge until they were swinging in the air. She let go with one hand and her body arched out, high above the ground. She steadied herself and rested her free hand against the flat wall below the window ledge. Her breathing had become faster, and the inside of her helmet visor was starting to steam up.

  “Three, two, one, zero,” she counted.

  On reaching zero, her fingers loosened and then she fell. Both hands clawed at the wall, trying to find a grip, but the wall turned into a window and she slid down it. Her feet suddenly landed on the ledge below, and she managed to cling with her fingertips to where the window met the wall. She stopped and breathed deeply, trying to slow down her heartbeat. Once she had regained her composure, she repeated her manoeuvre. This time she landed on the ledge more comfortably and was filled with a wave of euphoria.