state. Rose was barely managing to stay upright and she described her thoughts as scattered. She struggled to grasp the meaning of the conversation and to express herself and at times she experienced intrusive flashbacks from the accident. However, to reassure her grandma, Rose blamed a migraine for her indisposition and promised to call back as soon she felt better.
Things are not always what they seem, huh? She was hoping that she’d recover by the next day, which was Sunday. She was not familiar with the Gloomy Sunday song. She believed that her grandma’s call was a good omen.
Tempest in a tea pot
Only two weeks left till Christmas thought Rose sipping a cappuccino and looking through the large glass windows at the first snowflakes falling down from the clouded sky. She shuddered in anticipation thinking about the cold temperature outside and took another sip from her hot coffee. Amazingly the shop did not have the Turkish coffee Rose asked for although she was approaching that part of the world. They did have however their amazing apple strudel pastry and Rose was enjoying that right now. She glanced back at the large snowflakes that were bringing back old and fond memories. First snow here this hear, she was told.
Everyone was happy about it. It was part of the local traditions. Nobody here, from young kids to grownups, could imagine Christmas without snow. She could see with her mind’s eye people everywhere searching the barns and house basements for the old and dusted sled or sleigh, and she smiled. She tried to guess the type of snowflakes she was looking at but she was too far away. She’d be home soon and guaranteed to find plenty of snow there already and then she could go out exploring. She was able to recognize easily two of the 80 types or so of snowflakes crystals: the stellar and fernlike dendrites as they were of 2-5 millimeters and obvious to the naked eye. Her grandma, however, could tell the outside temperature just by looking at the type of snow crystal.
Rose was sitting comfortably in the new and modern Viennese airport waiting for her plane to have its fuel topped up. She was travelling alone and her spirits were a bit low although she was finally returning home. She was skimming through a magazine when her attention was caught by a sound coming from her mobile. She knew that she got mail and harried to check it out. It must be from Letitia, she thought as she was expected to arrive in Napoca in the next three hours if the weather conditions permitted.
To her surprise however, it was something totally unexpected. The brief message that just said ‘See you in January. James. ’ It implied a lot and made Rose happy. For a few moments she almost forgot how crazy her previous month in Brisvegas was and how she came to her decision to come home for Christmas and then she recalled all of it and tears flooded her eyes.
With her vision blurred by the tears and preoccupied with dabbing a paper tissue at her eyes, Rose did not notice the furtive male glances from a nearby table. Soon after that, as she left her own table, the man in a dark suit and reflective dark eyeglasses followed her keeping some distance between. His name was John and he was a very expensive agent. It was his skills and successes as a spy that made him famous and desirable to various agencies over the world. These days he never had time for a holiday as he was in high demand everywhere. John considered the current assignment easy and was acting very relaxed but still cautious.
Nobody would have made the connection between him and Rose as people were moving in all directions in the busy airport and there were frequent, last minute route changes as the passengers got text messages related to their flights. It was a low and continuous zooming that permeated the atmosphere already filled with energy.
Rose had been tailed by him since the moment she walked into the Brisvegas’s international airport about twenty four hours earlier. After he was sure that nobody else was following her he had a brief exchange with James Ommaney via a text message. To him the orders were crystal clear. He was expected to take responsibility for Rose’s safe trip to somewhere he never heard of before. It was a trip half way across the globe and he enjoyed that. It did not appear to him to be a trip full of action and initially he questioned his waste of time and skill on a mission like this but at the end of the day he was getting paid and that was what mattered to John. He was paid for executing orders not questioning them.
Rose went to the ladies room to refresh herself. She was feeling tired as she had not slept on the plane and entertained herself by watching a movie. She was pretty sure that now she was up to date with the movie world issues and every single movie that was made in the world last year. Not that she was a big film fan. And it wasn’t her direct intention. You see, Rose was never able to sleep during the long flights and at one point considered taking some sleeping tablets from her doctor. She changed her mind when she heard about the risk of deep vein thrombosis associated with prolonged sitting in uncomfortable positions that contributed to poor blood circulation.
After some debate Rose was very much tempted to struggle and pay for a first class ticket but later she gave up on that idea too. That’s after she found out about the price. She did not expect to hear that it was three times more expensive than the regular ticket. She did not have that much money.
While in the bathroom Rose decided to have a shower and change her summer clothes to something more suitable for local weather. She did that very quickly like always. With a new hair style and new clothes she was not recognized when she walked out by a relaxed and confident John who was starting to consider this trip a paid Holliday. It was the tailored pant suit and the floral batik that partially covered her head that mislead John who had a different image impregnated on his retina, that of a young lady wearing a floral sleeveless dress. Of course it was only a matter of minutes till he realized his mistake and managed to catch up with Rose. He was lucky that she wasn’t planning to change her travel route so he was able to locate her in the now boarding airplane. Initially and understandably John treated the incident with suspicion but after analyzing all the facts available to him he reached the conclusion that it was a false alarm and started to relax again.
Back in her seat Rose was now chatting happily with a new passenger and to John annoyance he could not make any of it. His instruments were not able to translate it, he realized with increasing frustration. He had a recorder placed in Rose’s seat to be able to listen to any verbal exchange that could’ve been of any significance for his current job. It was the way he always worked and it certainly made his job much easier. The recorder was able to transmit and translate instantaneously. About forty languages and dialects but not this gibberish, he thought angrily now. Then he managed to calm himself down reminding himself that might not even be important. The way he saw it, this case, was anyway just a brouhaha. He was right about it and he would’ve been very happy to know that.
John was right to focus on the forty languages that were the most commonly spoken. Although the ethnologic catalogue records almost 7000 languages in the world, the majority of population that is about 94% of people only speak about forty languages. About a quarter of the world’s languages are spoken by less than 1000 people each. Well John knew that and was now wondering if the boss forgot to tell him something about this lady.
A few meters further away, Rose was oblivious to John’s frustration and was allowing herself to speak freely her gypsy dialect conscious that not many people around would be able to understand it. Rose was a very private person. Her current companion struck a conversation with her on the pattern of her batik. It was something very subtle but immediately recognized as a familiar pattern by the gypsy eyes. Initially Rose was surprised but then remembered her grandma telling her about the way gypsies used to communicate through colors and patterns and that made sense to Rose. Apart from the dialect spoken, the young female gypsy who was talking to Rose and whose name was Oka, looked like any other person on board but Rose identified in turn by the gypsy motif in Oka’s own batik and hand gloves.
The girls were talking gossip and not much else. They were having a lot of fun and feeling good in each othe
r’s company although they had never met before. Both of them were discovering the many things they had in common and decided to exchange phone numbers. Oka was studying in Germany and was visiting her family for the Christmas period. They both grew up near Cluj and were still fond of the area.
The time passed very quickly and suddenly they found themselves above the Carpathians mountains ready to land and stillness settled in the air as the passengers waited for the crew to focus on their gadgets and bring them safely down from the sky. The snow was now everywhere and the men had to trust their instruments. John found himself hoping that the pilot’s gadgets were able to do a better job than his. He considered that a joke but would have not appreciated if other people actually considered that funny.
As the plane landed safely everyone closer to the windows could see the huge mountains like piles of snow on the side of the tarmac and then cars and buildings when they came closer to the airport. It was the first evidence that they landed up in some snowy mountains and in an area where Christmas meant always snow.