#almost right after having a bullet extracted from her WHICH SHE ALSO PRESENTS AS EVIDENCE. thats metal as fuck ok

[puppyeared]

who is your favorite AA character? 👁️👁️

ziska… I hope capcom brings her back someday

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Maria raped in Bolivia. Get the Moon sect out.

Aquí   (Here)        October 11, 2015

Justice for Maria: Get the Moon sect out of Bolivia

Illustration text:

Protest for the continuation of the legal process against members of the “Moon church,” with transparency. They are accused of rape and human trafficking of a young woman from Sucre.

Along with: Captain Yote    Zankos    Performans

Monday, August 24th at 10:00am

Chuquisaca Prosecutor’s Office (next to the Correo del Sur newspaper)

We denounce the violence; the government does not comply.

JUSTICE !!!!

___________________________________

By Roberto Ibarguen Ch.

This August, we are witnessing with astonishment the possibility that our judicial system, through incapability and inefficiency as frequently happens, will release a rapist. The defendants in this case are none other than Siichiro Sagawa, the leader of the infamous “Unification Church” in Bolivia, and seven other well-known members of this sect.

The chances that the accused subjects of the Unification Church (better known as the Moon sect) will be freed is quite high, given the power and money the organization has. Previously many other fully proven allegations have been dismissed, namely: the allegations of their participation in the massacres of Guatemalan indigenous peoples when they supported the dictator Ríos Montt (see note 1 below); support for coups d’état in Chile and Bolivia (see Bolivia section on this this web page); countries where they established excellent relationships and business interests with dictators such as Augusto Pinochet and García Meza; of the allegations of fraudulent purchases of companies in Uruguay and of thousands of hectares of land in Brazil and Paraguay, which were fenced off and deforested, mercilessly attacking the inhabitants of the respective areas, who were mostly indigenous people (note 2). [The Moon sect have been protected] because of the excellent contacts they maintain with power groups in different countries, including Bolivia, where Sun Myung Moon himself, at the head of a group of Korean businessmen, held a meeting in 2010 with President Evo Morales. Although it is not known what the meeting was about, some journalists suppose that it was a lobbying effort to participate in the gas business when exported by Chile, since they are the owners of a large fleet of deep draft ships.

The facts about this crime of rape in Bolivia have been described to us by the activists of the group called “Feministas Callejeras” (“Street Feminists”), and can be clarified by reviewing legal information and news media:

“In Sucre, in 2012, a young woman, whom we will call Maria, began her studies at the University. [At the entrance to] her faculty she was intercepted by two women who offer leadership courses for young people. She attended their meetings in which religion was not initially discussed. However, little by little, they introduced the subject of religion, and the transformation [ultimately moves to the necessity] a person has to serve the Reverend SUN MYUNG MOON (world leader of the Moon sect). Although Maria tried to leave the group, she was stuck in through various arguments and by different people. Finally, in 2013 she was invited to a supposed youth congress in Santa Cruz. The group leaders got permission from Maria’s family for her to travel to the event.

In Santa Cruz, Maria meets the leader, SAGAWA SENSEI. Sensei means teacher; his real name is SIICHIRO SAGAWA. He is in charge of the group conferences. On the second day, the young woman remembers that she was praying and then she was fading (losing consciousness). When she regains consciousness, the accused women were holding her feet and hands while saying that “there were only going to be 21.” Maria, feels that they are raping her, a fact that was repeated for three days. Because Maria did not communicate with her mother, she then asks her relative who lives in Santa Cruz, to look for the young woman. They found Maria in a state of shock.”

The legal process, which has been continuing for over a year, has come up against a series of tricks – as reported in the Correo del Sur (Southern Mail) newspaper dated June 10, 2015.

“… an error on the part of the prosecutor assigned to the case and by not presenting the forensic medical certificate which proved the victim had been raped, the defendant was favored with house arrest.” The process is currently on the verge of being closed (shut down), supposedly because of the accusation presented by the prosecution on Friday, August 14 of this year in the city of Santa Cruz, requesting the preventive detention of the defendants is flawed. This would lead to a hearing in the city of Sucre for the prosecution to rectify its error. According to the victim’s family, and the activists group “Feministas Callejeras”, the possibility that the case could be closed (terminated) and the rapists of Maria could be released can only be reversed if civil society as a whole publicly pressures the corresponding parts of the Judiciary to do justice – without the Judiciary leaning in favor of the power and money of the accused [namely, the Moon sect].

From the information on these pages, in addition to joining with the demand that justice be done and that the rapist and his accomplices be imprisoned, we also demand that the “Unification Church” be investigated. We take into consideration what our colleague, the journalist Antonio Peredo Leigue, wrote in one of his articles in 2010:

“Officially, the Moon sect is not active in the country. Freedom of religion does not mean that believers are permitted to carry out any kind of activity while hiding behind a cloak of religion. However, it is almost impossible to believe that the sect is not secretly active in Bolivia. If already in the 1990s the sect was formally expelled from the cities where its missionaries were working publicly, then the sect was likely to remain in the country, maintaining a low profile while continuing its activities.”

We also join together with the request made in the same article by Antonio Peredo Leigue, “The Moon sect, with such a background, must be thrown out.” This measure would not only do justice to the young victim of rape in Bolivia, but it would safeguard other young women who could be assaulted in the same way by the Moon sect. It seems rape is one of their recurring practices. (see note 3) Expelling the Moon sect would also bring some justice to the women and men who were massacred, with the support of the Unification Church, throughout the continent (note 1) – and to the indigenous peoples who were vilely dispossessed of their land in brother countries. (note 2)

_________________________________________

Note 1. The Moon-owned Washington Times raised funds to support the “contras” who fought against the elected government of Nicaragua. Fundraising was just one of the many ways the Moon organization supported that war, which spilled over into neighboring countries.

Here is an extract from pages 180-181 of Inside The League (The shocking exposé of how terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American death squads have infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League) by Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson

“Immediately after coming to power [in Guatemala], Ríos Montt declared he would put an end to the urban death squads, and for the most part he did so. This sudden end to the daily killings and disappearances in Guatemala City amounted to tangible evidence that the death squads were controlled by— and operated from within— the armed forces. It didn’t end entirely, as one of the authors can attest.14

Although most of the violence stopped in the cities, the civil war with the guerrillas, who had shown renewed strength during the Lucas regime, continued in the rural hinterlands. In response, Ríos Montt unleashed a highly successful counterinsurgency program. Although regions were pacified, the operations also resulted in many large-scale massacres of Indians suspected of supporting the guerrillas.

Counterinsurgency was complemented by a civic action campaign. “Beans and Bullets” (beans for those who submit, bullets for those who don’t) was aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the civilians, no matter what it took.

Ríos Montt didn’t fit into the cloak of human rights defender that American conservatives and evangelicals tried to wrap about him. At the same time as the “Beans and Bullets” program was going on, he established secret army tribunals to try and to execute “subversives,” defending the executions on the basis of an amnesty he had offered the rebels: “Why should we kill people without legal backing? The amnesty gives us the judicial framework for killing. Anyone who refuses to surrender will be shot.”15 (Ríos Montt TV interview)

In 1982, one of the authors questioned Ríos Montt about four suspected guerrillas who had just been executed by firing squads.

“When all the bodies appeared on the roads riddled with bullets,” the president rambled, “they said that here was the law of the jungle without any legal validity. These firing squads are legal— judicially established and everything. And the executions were done— but, as I did four, I could have done four hundred. But no, the law is the law.”16 (Ríos Montt TV interview)

Ríos Montt’s evangelical zeal also had appeal for the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. In 1982, CAUSA established an office in Guatemala and the following year organized a “World Media Conference” in Guatemala City [starting on June 8]. The conference included some two hundred participants from forty-five countries. From their base in Guatemala, the press attendees traveled to Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. “The writers met with military and business leaders in each country, hearing from [Bo Hi] Pak and also from then-President Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala.”17 (The Washington Post) [There was another WMC in Cartagena, Colombia in September 1983.]

While Ríos Montt waged war in the country and attempted to convert his countrymen to his version of the “word” of God in bizarre Sunday-night television sermons …”

_________________________________________

Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy by Frederick Clarkson, page 136

One place where the politics of demons was played out in a particularly horrific fashion should serve as a warning. Guatemalan Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt seized power in a 1982 military coup that was hailed at the time by U.S. evangelicals who were excited that one of their own (Ríos Montt is a member of a U.S.-based Pentecostal sect) was now a head of state. What Pat Robertson refers to as the “enlightened leadership” of the Ríos Montt regime,50 lasted into 1983 when it fell to another military coup. Robertson was and remains a Ríos Montt booster, despite, or perhaps because of Ríos Montt’s scorched earth counter-insurgency campaign that killed as many as 10,000 civilians. This genocidal campaign, ostensibly against a guerrilla insurgency, was often framed in religious terms, according to author Sara Diamond. This episode epitomizes the logical outcome of the politics of demons—what happens when religious intolerance is conflated with the political/military aims of state power. One pastor from Ríos Montt’s group, the U.S.-based Gospel Outreach, explained: “The Army does not massacre the Indians. It massacres demons, and the Indians are demon possessed; they are communists. We hold Brother Efraín Ríos Montt like King David of the Old Testament. He is the King of the New Testament.”51 Gospel Outreach members also reportedly participated in the Montt regime’s “espionage and torture-interrogation operations.”

_________________________________________

Note 2. The Unification Church organization, the new owners of Puerto Casado in Paraguay, set up fences around the town in the late 2000s. This barred the inhabitants from accessing the forest or the river which flowed nearby. Locals are asking for some land so they can grow subsistence crops and rear cattle. See Paraguay section HERE 

Sun Myung Moon’s Land in Brazil Under Seal New York Times   May 10, 2003  

The police entered a farm in Mato Grosso do Sul belonging to Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, and sealed it. They also blocked him from selling nine other properties over environmental concerns. The move, they said, was to force Mr. Moon to carry out environmental impact studies for developments on the properties, on the fringes of the world’s largest wetlands, the Pantanal. “It is a region which has a highly fragile environment,” said Alexandre Ruslan, a prosecutor in Matto Grosso do Sul, where Mr. Moon bought 138,000 acres in the 1990’s. Mr. Ruslan said Mr. Moon has built roads and buildings and has cut down forests, but has failed to carry out environmental studies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/world/world-briefing-americas-brazil-sun-myung-moon-land-under-seal.html

_________________________________________

Note 3. The allegation of “rape is one of their recurring practices” has not been substantiated. However, in the early days (1946-1962) Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church did practise a “womb cleansing” sex ritual called pikareum. Since the 1960s married couples have to perform a “Three Day [Sex] Ceremony” to reverse the purported sexual sin of Adam and Eve. Sun Myung Moon himself has a number of illegitimate children. He was arrested and charged with immorality, adultery or bigamy in Korea in 1946, 1948 and 1955. In the first two instances, Moon spent time in jail. The Los Angeles Times Moon obituary refers to his bigamy, as do many other sources, including Korean and Japanese sources. The 1955 case, which involved a large number of female university students, is well documented. Moon admitted to the judge in court that he was guilty of draft dodging. He was sentenced to two years in jail. A few months later he was suddenly declared innocent and released late at night. One female church member, who was arrested at the same time as Moon, admitted the sex charges. After a short time in jail she was released due to the intervention of her very wealthy father, Mr. Choi.

_________________________________________

Sun Myung Moon organization activities in Central & South America

Moon’s theology for his pikareum sex rituals with all the 36 wives

Ritual Sex in the Unification Church – Kirsti L. Nevalainen

Sun Myung Moon – Restoration through Incest

The FFWPU / Unification Church and Shamanism

How “God’s Day” was established on January 1, 1968

Moon used a ‘Honey Trap’ – Choi Soon-yeong

Pikareum emerged at Ewha Womans University in 1955

The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic

Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child – Mother Jones

Actividades de la Secta Moon en países de habla hispana

Teología de Sun Myung Moon para sus rituales sexuales

Una mujer japonesa fue reclutada por la Federación de Familias y luego vendida a un granjero coreano

Justicia para María: fuera de Bolivia la secta Moon

La secta Moon al acecho – Antonio Peredo Leigue

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Extraction (10/16)

Summary: Intelligence Agent Belle French has been given her most challenging assignment yet – one that will provide her agency with absolutely vital information on a practically untouchable arms dealer.

In addition to all the usual dangers any assignment carries, Belle also faces the edifying task of convincing Rum Gold to return to help the agency one last time. Agent Gold left the world of international espionage years ago, after an assignment went terribly wrong and ended in his imprisonment and torture, and he vowed never to return, but the agency cannot complete their mission without him…

===

Read the previous chapters here on AO3.

===

Ten

The Mother of Mercy chapel was on the outskirts of the city, but not too far out that driving up to it would look strange. Although the majority of people who believed chose to go to the places of worship further in, Mother of Mercy had a small, stalwart congregation, and was home to Avalon’s only order of nuns. The Sisters of Mercy had taken in and helped rehouse hundreds of people who had been left homeless during the civil war, and for this reason the Mother of Mercy chapel was considered by some to be Avalon’s main tourist attraction. Well, it would have been, had Avalon had any tourists, Belle reflected as the taxi rumbled up the bumpy roads towards the church. The driver was a chatty lady; both were characteristics that were unusual in Avalonian taxi drivers, and she seemed desperate to engage them in conversation.

“So what brings you out here then?” she asked. “Not many people leave the city centre.”

“We’re in Avalon on business,” Belle replied. Gold had listened to one run-on sentence from the woman and given Belle a look that said ‘right, you can handle this one’. “We’ve heard so much about the Sisters of Mercy and since we had some spare time, we decided to go and see the chapel.”

“Oh, it is beautiful,” the driver said. “It managed to escape the war almost completely undamaged. It’s not as grand as the cathedral obviously, but at least there aren’t any bullet holes in the stained glass and you don’t have to wear five layers of scarves when you go in for communion during the winter…”

She continued to babble on until they reached the chapel, whereupon she gave them her card and told them that her name was Anna and she was working till ten if they wanted a lift back. Gold waited until the taxi was out of sight before burying his face in his hands and giving a suppressed moan of frustration.

“Do you think she has an off-switch?” he asked his palms, and Belle laughed.

“Probably not, but at least she was doing all the talking and not trying to get a load of incriminating evidence out of us.”

They made their way towards the church, and Belle could see Leroy standing in the foyer talking to a young nun. She was dressed primly all in various shades of navy and for a moment, Belle was reminded of Agent Blue. Leroy caught sight of them and waved them over.

“This is Sister Astrid,” he said as the nun shook hands with them both. “She’s been a contact of ours here at Mother of Mercy for a few years now.”

“Yes. Kevin’s been a great friend to the chapel.” Although it was standard practice never to give your real name to the assets you worked with so that you could have full deniability if the need arose, Belle still had to smile at the fact Leroy had chosen to call himself Kevin for Astrid. “We don’t really get involved in anything,” she added quickly, throwing her hands up as if at gunpoint, trying to convince them that she wasn’t any kind of threat. “We just make sure that the chapel stays safe so that Kevin can use it for meetings and… stuff.” She leaned in a little conspiratorially. “He’s never told me what you really do.”

“Well, you know, it’s on a need to know basis, Sister,” Leroy said. He’d gone a little bit pink and the blush was spreading from his cheeks and over the top of his bald head. “We can’t have any of you ladies getting hurt as a result. We’re only doing it to protect you, you know.”

“I know, Kevin. It’s very sweet of you.” She patted his arm affectionately and indicated for Belle and Gold to follow her into the chapel. “I’ve done this for Kevin and his colleagues before,” she explained as they entered and Leroy took his leave of them. “I know what all the protocols are, and the safety signals are in place.” She indicated the little table with a bowl for donations, which was covered with a blue cloth. “Blue means it’s safe, red means it’s not. You can see the table from the road so you don’t even need to turn in.” She took them into the main chapel. “It’s not as echoey as you might think.”

It was a beautiful little church, and if Belle had been on holiday she would have been taking all kinds of artistic snapshots of it, but it felt wrong to be wasting time appreciating the architecture when something so much more important was about to take place here. The place was deserted apart from a couple of nuns praying at the altar, and Astrid went to join them.

“Ok,” Belle muttered to her mic. “We’re in.”

“Good to hear,” Emma said in her ear. “We’re parked up round the back and I’ve got CCTV feeds coming out of my ears here. I take it you met Leroy’s little girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Leroy exclaimed over the comms. “I mean, come on, she’s a nun and I’m a, me, and you know, it would be completely impossible.”

“Oh please, Kevin, I’ve seen the way she looks at you,” Emma teased.

“Can we keep on topic please?” Gold hissed through his teeth. “If you make me laugh and blow my cover you’ll be incredibly sorry.”

“Sorry, Gold,” Emma said. “We’ll behave.” Obviously not speaking directly into her mic, she added quietly: “Seriously? You got a bunch of nuns as assets and you got a crush on one of them?”

“Shut up,” Leroy muttered.

Belle and Gold settled in to wait for Regina, and Belle looked up at the stained glass window above the altar. A security light outside was shining in through the glass casting everything in eerie colours, and although it was a lovely aesthetic, it still made Belle shiver. She never liked meeting in places like this, their emptiness giving the illusion of privacy but their size and many windows giving the impression of being watched. She glanced over at Gold. He was sitting with his hands clasped tightly together, staring at the iconography. Belle wondered if he was praying.

The church clock began to strike six and on cue, Belle’s earpiece came to life.

“We’ve got movement,” Emma said. “Black range rover with non-standard plates, it’s registered to the Queen. Driver and one passenger.”

“It’s Regina and Daniel,” Leroy added. “Looks like Daniel’s staying in the car. Let’s get this show on the road.”

A few minutes later, Belle heard the clink of coins bouncing into the donation bowl and the quick tap of footsteps coming down the church. She glanced over her shoulder to see Regina coming towards them. All of the nuns had left apart from Astrid, who had taken up a position in the front pew, apparently knitting baby booties but in reality keeping an eye out for anything untoward.

Regina slipped into the pew beside Belle and Gold.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

Gold nodded. “Yes, everything is under control. We’ve been considering our plans for you and Daniel.” He went on to briefly outline what he and Belle had decided with regard to extracting the both of them, and Regina nodded.

“Thank you.”

“We’ll keep meeting over the next couple of days,” Gold said, going on to give her a time, place and safe signals for their next meeting. “If for any reason it’s not safe to meet then we’ll send you dropbox instructions, there’s a dedicated locker at the central train station.” He passed over a key. “Keep gathering as much intelligence as you can, and we’ll get you out of here. Do you have your phone on you?”

“No, I was told not to bring it, in case it was tracked.”

“Good girl. When you get home, make sure it’s turned off and leave it at home. This is a burner,” he added, giving her a cheap cell from the stash of burners Mal had at the residency. “If you need to make calls, use this phone and delete the history afterwards. This is the number we will use to contact you, if we need to, but it will only be in an emergency. If you need to contact us in an emergency, this is the number to use,” Gold said, handing her a post-it note. “Memorise it, don’t write it down anywhere.”

Regina spent a few minutes reading the number over and over to memorise it and handed the post-it back. “Ok, I’ve got it.”

“Good. Other than that, just keep going about your life as normal, and we’ll do everything that needs to be done behind the scenes. The only other advice I can give is to try not to give your mother any cause to suspect you.”

Regina smiled. “Thank you so much.” She paused. “I know it can’t be easy for you, and I’m sorry that you had to come back here, but… I can’t regret asking you to come. You’re just what I expected you to be. Do you understand that?”

Gold gave a sad smile. “Yes, that I can well understand. Now you’re going to be missed, so I’d get going if I were you.”

She thanked him again and left them, and Gold let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair as he watched her rush back down the aisle to the entrance.

“Gold,” he muttered under his breath, “you goddamn fool.”

They were the same words that he had murmured back in Lochdubh when they had first confronted him with a view to recruiting him for the job, and once again, Belle had to wonder at the significance. It wasn’t unheard of for agents to get emotionally invested in their assignments, especially those ones that they had been attached to a long time, and Belle really wanted to know what Gold’s stake in this particular mission was. Something went deeper than his lost son and his bitter enmity with Blue about the whole thing.

“Regina and Daniel have gone,” Leroy said in her ear, bringing her back to the present.

Gold and Belle stood and left the church, saying their goodbyes to Astrid. Gold’s limp was more pronounced as they made their way around the back of the building to where the generic white van was parked up. He seemed to have aged in the half an hour or so that they had spent in the church, being back in the game after so long was taking its toll on him, but there was a determination in his stance. He was going to see this through to the end or he was going to die trying. Leroy opened the back of the van and helped the two of them into it.

“Everything according to plan?” Emma asked, taking off her headphones and half-turning away from her monitors.

“Yes,” Gold said. “Well, apart from this morning’s little mishap. But this meet went as it should have done.”

“Yeah, about that.” Emma pulled up a bunch of reports on her screen. “We’ve not had any suspicious activity from Zelena so far, her tails are all reporting situation normal but we’ve got her on a 24/7 watch detail now. Apparently her meeting at the hotel was a legit one so there’s no reason to suspect that she was looking out for you, but obviously when you work in this service for as long as we have, you know that legit tends to take on an entirely different meaning.”

“Indeed,” Gold said dryly. “What about her past?”

Leroy shook his head. “We’ve got nothing showing any red flags at the moment,” he said. “But Rory and Mal are having some trouble getting into her files, they’re locked down pretty tight on the government servers and Mal’s throwing everything she can at them, but there’s a limit to what we can do before someone notices that we’re essentially trying to hack them. Rory’s in the middle of building some new software but it’s going to take a little time. Poor girl’s going to be on the coffee and the pro-plus all night. I’d offer to help, but computers don’t speak my language.”

“You’re telling me,” Emma said. “I’m amazed you managed to function before Rory came out here.”

“I don’t trust modern technology,” Leroy complained. “Gold, back me up here. Everything was a lot simpler before we started relying on virtual reality for everything.”

Gold just laughed. “I don’t know, I find that virtual reality is a much more welcoming option than actual reality on a worryingly regular basis.”

“Well, all in all I think that we can call today a success, even if it took a little longer than expected to achieve it,” Belle said. Despite the concerns that they were now facing regarding Zelena, she wanted to make the most of what they had managed to do. They’d made contact with Regina and made a plan for dealing with the curveball that was Daniel, and all that remained was to keep on enacting it. Just as long as there weren’t any more curveballs coming their way, and as was usually the case with these things, they wouldn’t necessarily know about them until they got smacked in the face. They needed to be vigilant at all costs.

With nothing left to report and their meet with Regina confirmed for the next day, there was no point in Belle and Gold hanging around in the van with Leroy and Emma any longer, and they got out, making their way down the driveway. Gold called them a cab from a company that Anna did not work for, and they stood in the shadows waiting for it, out of sight of the bright white security lights that surrounded the chapel. In a way Belle was sad to be leaving a place of such tranquillity and respite. It had installed a sense of calm in her, and the thought of going back into the dreary bustle of the busy city put her on edge. In the end though, even Mother of Mercy wasn’t safe from the influence of their double lives. The nuns here were as much a part of the great system of espionage as any of the rest of them were, and they had far less protection than the resident agents had.

Almost unconsciously, Belle reached out for Gold’s hand. It was hard to see him in the inky blackness that surrounded the stark light, and she needed the reassurance that he was still there. He took her fingers, squeezing gently and giving her troubled soul the comfort that only the human touch can give. She hoped that he was taking some measure of solace from it too, lord knows he needed it after today’s events. Her mind came full circle back to Regina and the words from the shop.

“Gold,” she began, but discussing something so delicate and personal out here in the open was against every protocol and procedure her brain could care to throw at her.

“Yes?”

“Never mind. I’ll ask you when we get back to the hotel.”

“Ok.” His voice was calm, affable, and Belle would have given anything to know what he was thinking. He still had not let go of her hand, and Belle just enjoyed the warmth of his fingers around hers. For the first time, she found herself thinking beyond their assignment. Once they got back to the UK with Regina and they’d managed to get Daniel out, what would happen then? She would file her paperwork and get another assignment. Gold would go back to his antiques in Scotland. He was only her colleague and team-mate for this one assignment, and after that they would be free to fraternise as much as they wished. Provided, of course, that Gold would want to fraternise with her after all this was over. She’d been the one to bring Avalon back into his life, after all, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he never wanted to see her again after that. Besides, she had no indication that her burgeoning attraction to him was in any way returned. All she had were the little smiles he had given her over the past few days, and the fact that he was not letting go of her hand.

The crunch of gravel under tires and winking headlights heralded the arrival of the taxi and Belle came back to the present. Before either of them could think about the future, they first had to get through the now. Gold drew his hand out of hers and went to open the taxi door for her, and the moment was over. The trip back to the hotel was infinitely quieter than the reverse had been, and Belle was thankful for that. None of the three people in the car said anything, until suddenly Gold sat upright and looked out of the window.

“Bloody hell,” he murmured.

“Something wrong?” Belle asked, feeling the immediate fight or flight response kick in, although how she was going to do either whilst in a moving taxi she didn’t know.

“No… I just can’t believe it’s still there.”

“What is?”

They pulled up at a red light and Gold indicated a restaurant on the road behind them out of the rear window, its flickering neon reading ‘Marco’s Italian Table’. He gave a little smile, and then a laugh, and it was wonderful to see him so happy in the midst of all the worry. Even so, Belle still had to raise an eyebrow.

“It’s an Italian restaurant,” she said.

“Yes, yes it is,” Gold said. “I’ll explain later. I’m just extremely happy to see it.”

“Marco’s?” the taxi driver said. “You’ve been there before? Best Italian cuisine in all of Avalon, I think. Mind you, it’s not exactly hard.”

“I was there a long time ago,” Gold said. “Does Marco still run the place?”

“No, no, he retired last year. His son does the cooking now. Not as good as Marco but still…” The driver gave a noise of appreciation and fell silent again, but the small smile remained on Gold’s face until they arrived back at the hotel.

The paper wedges in the lock of their room were undisturbed but they swept the place for bugs again and checked all the paperwork was still in tact just in case, and Gold ordered room service for dinner. Waiting for the meal to arrive, he took off his jacket and holster and collapsed onto the sofa, stretching out his bad leg in front of him.

“Marco was one of my assets when I was first working in Avalon,” he said in response to Belle’s unasked question. “He was a close personal friend as well as a valuable intelligence source. Naturally, he was burned as soon as I was captured, and for the past twenty years I’ve been worrying about him, hoping that he was able to get out if he needed to and that his family were provided for. It’s not the kind of thing I could inquire into without attracting attention.” Burned assets were untouchable; once the Agency cut off communication with them then that was it, they were not to be contacted again because the deniability would be broken. “Seeing the place still open today, and knowing that Marco and his son are both all right, well, it’s taken a great weight off my mind.”

Belle smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.”

The food arrived soon after and once they were both comfortable ensconced on the sofa with their plates, Gold turned to Belle again.

“So… what was it that you were going to ask me before the taxi arrived?”