Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by Elephant's Child and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. pounded 

2. pearl 

3. secret 

4. tense 

5. challenge 

6. human 

and/or: 

1. middle 

2. taken 

3. button 

4. rare 

5. intelligence 

6. praise

Here is my story:

THE NECKLACE

My heart pounded each time I looked at it. The necklace. THE necklace. A string of freshwater pearls with a single, rare, black pearl in the middle of the string. I knew it well. It had been stolen from the Blackwell mansion over thirty years ago and never seen again. 

I had been working with British Intelligence at the time, in their Secret Service department, where rumors abounded about the necklace being taken by Cold War spies because the mother-of-pearl button closure was a miniature case containing a microfilm of certain leaders who wished to never be found.

The challenge to find these thieves had been huge, everyone wanted to be the first to find information. The atmosphere within the division was tense twenty-four hours a day. It was only human to want to be the one earning the praise for cracking the case.

But none of us ever did. The thieves had vanished off the face of the earth and the necklace with them. Until now. I was long since retired with a handsome pension and spent many hours frequenting small hole-in-the-wall Jewellery shops, those in particular that had been known for fencing stolen goods in the past.

That was how I had found the necklace. In a tiny dark shop, now named Benson’s Bling, it sat in pride of place in the centre display case. I bought it immediately, having it placed in a velvet lined case and took it home. The original button closure was missing, no one would ever know now whether or not it had actually been a casing for a microfilm.

The necklace was now closed by a more modern pearl button and loop affair, it detracted from its value, but not from its beauty. I had taken it into the department a day after I had purchased it and it had been examined minutely by all types of modern equipment, pronounced to be the real thing, and handed back to me. It was mine forever. As was the thin microfilm wound around the string that held the black pearl.

I had removed it of course, before taking the necklace in for examination. My grandfather’s name was on that list. It would do no good to expose that now, he was long dead and the others were too. Now no one would ever know I had been a double agent.