Diamond approved of this Substack post and showed it to Frank, who nodded along. “I won’t tell you what I am visualising!” he laughed. “It might scare you away!”
“My visions are like a homing pigeon.” declared Diamond. “I keep fantasising about a thatched cottage in the country, with chickens around the door and roses…. lots of roses!” Frank was surprised, he had seen Pru’s schedule for Diamond for the coming fortnight and it was all parties, art shows and photo opportunities. London’s phoney, celeb scene which Frank had witnessed a thousand times before. In the past he had bodyguarded some famous names and Diamond had always been part of that circuit. Now he was bodyguarding the love of his life and that felt very different. “Did you see Dribbly Dick has announced you will be at his porn premiere?” he asked, scrutinising the schedule. “He’s got a nerve! He even includes Olympia!”
Diamond wrinkled her nose as much as she could, given all the botox in her face. “I need a clone!” she wailed. “There is no way Lymp is going to go to THAT. She always says that porn is a poor substitute for the real thing!” and she told Frank a couple of hilarious stories about Olympia’s regular man-hunts. Frank laughed and agreed that he could see the predator in Olympia when she posed for the paparazzi. “You better believe it, Frank!” warned Diamond. “When Lymp wants something, she is terrifying!”
Pru received a call from Diamond demanding that the whole porn movie premiere booking be cancelled. Pru wasn’t a bit surprised and was well prepared. She reeled off a list of other celebrities who were also slated to appear. “You don’t have to actually watch the thing, Diamond!” she said gently, “You can always adjourn to the nearest wine bar discreetly, after the paps have gone and the red carpet is rolled up! Just see it as an opportunity to show off your gorgeous new waistline, nothing more.” Diamond faltered a little. “Look I want out, if at all possible…. and you do realise that Olympia will probably sack you for booking her into this?” Pru shrugged. Oh so what? She grumbled inside her head, but she placated Diamond just as she had always done. The fact is that neither Olympia nor Diamond would be as famous as they were without Pru’s contacts in the media and, if they wanted to be famous while actually doing absolutely nothing at all, then they would soon realise that Pru was un-sackable. More is the pity.
Frank kept his silence about Dribbly Dick. He had now pieced together a background check which revealed that Dick was into far more than porn. Dick was a ‘retired’ KGB officer who appeared to have defected to the West bringing a hefty chunk of Russian stolen wealth with him. He had big connections with Washington DC and Kiev, Ukraine. He lived in several places at once and he used two passports in two names. There was a sniff of the sex trafficker around Dick, aka Dimitri Olenski, but nothing which could trigger a full investigation. He had friends in the FBI and the CIA, especially those who had recently acquired beautiful Ukrainian wives. He had ridden the Lolita Express.
Before defecting to London, Dick had been assigned to Russian energy oligarchs for at least a decade. There was little that he did not know about the oil and gas industry. Security staff look disinterested when they are on duty, but they don’t switch off their senses and their natural curiosity. Dick had profited hugely from his trained spying abilities in far more ways than were obvious to the untrained eye.
Frank could find no reported incident which could have triggered Dick’s defection and it, therefore, looked fake to him. After a couple of years establishing a small property portfolio in London’s swankiest postcodes, Dick had begun to finance a new sophisticated style of porn film production designed to be marketed with Hollywood hubris and bravado. He had observed how crude the industry was in the west and resolved to correct that bad reputation.
Frank sensed that there may be much more to Dribbly Dick, he could smell it. A big clue came when he discovered, entirely by accident, that Mr Xavier Duhdashian had made much of his fortune by quietly investing in some very remote corners of the oil and gas industry. He casually pointed to a portrait of Xavier, hanging in the hallway of Diamond’s Kensington town house and asked how the old man had died. Diamond said it had been very sudden. A heart attack in a very exclusive London hotel. “Mind you,” said Dim, “We never did find out why he was there!” Frank asked when this had been and then picked up his MI6 identification card before ‘going for a run’ around Kensington Park.
He called into the Park Grand Hotel and asked to see the guest list for a certain date in 2017. Diamond’s father was not listed but Dribbly Dick was…… he had booked the small meeting room for a private conference.
It could not be a coincidence that Dimitri Olenski had been present at the demise of both Duhdashian parents even though the two events were five years apart.
Frank resumed his run increasing the pace, forgetting all about the pain in his wounds.
—0—
Dave and Khan were enjoying a break in the heavy weather. The windspeed had dropped to a comfortable 35 miles per hour and the deafening howling had subsided to a gentle almost gust-free warm and even blast. They were earnestly discussing music.
“Do you play any instruments?” Khan asked Dave. “Nah mate, no time for that malarkey, money for nothin’ and yer chicks for free! Do you?” and Khan nodded. “Yeah, I play guitar, well everyone does in Mexico, and I love the bongos, like all Caribs!”
Olympia popped her head up from the cabin below. She was greeted by two grown men head-banging around like a pair of overgrown teenagers. The volume of the music in the wheelhouse was insufferable, so she ducked down again and deftly tore off two single sheets of toilet paper which she stuffed into her ears just in time before she got thunderstruck.
She only returned to the deck when the frenetics gave way to some virtuoso guitarist chatting about his equipment. The blue skies with genuine white clouds scudding along was a welcome sight after 3 days of stormy rain. Her hair was dry and she was warm. How remarkable! She thought, wryly, but happily breathed deep, grateful for the glorious ocean around her.
To access all the episodes of this ludicrous fictional tale of social media influencers and their self indulgent life, simply go to the pinned comment on:
Episode 17 -https://francesleader.substack.com/p/diamonds-are-occasionally-dim
I love this series Frances, thank you!