The Honorable Correspondent
by Henry Scholder
Category: Fiction

The freighter Twanee unloaded her cargo at a secret harbor on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf and then hurriedly steamed away. The Twanee’s luck until then had been very good; on several occasions its Greek captain had seen Iraqi aircraft and was certain they had spotted him, yet he’d been spared. But that night, after reentering international waters, a missile attack sank the Twanee with all hands aboard. The disappearance of the Twanee complicated things for Sarah Tillinghast, an English investigative reporter, as the ship had been a clue within a fragmented tale of unusual goings-on in the Gulf War. Sarah’s assignment began with a tip from a quirky whistleblower employed by France’s hyper-secretive counter intelligence service, SEDCE. The war between Iraq and Iran lasted eight years, killing one and a half million people. Neither side could point to any tangible gains when it ended. To the arms merchants, including governments who kept the warring parties supplied, it had been a period of great prosperity. In that war, Saddam Hussein was friend to the Western Allies and many others as well, while Iran and its hostage taking leadership were anathema to nearly all. The exception was Count Bertrand “Bobo” de Bossier, head of SEDCE, a brilliant out-of-the-box thinker. Bobo constructed and implemented policies at odds with those of the others, whom he chose to keep uninformed of his views and doings. And since there was virtually no separation between Bobo’s personal and professional life, he also excluded his best friend and partner, his subordinate and lover, and his elected superiors. Sarah, whose pursuit of this story leads her to Bobo and his friends, is left to try and piece it all together. But what she discovers poses great risk both for her and the man she fell in love with along the way.