© 2026 Richard Taylor
She was born on May 13th 1977, which was a Friday. Sorry, what am I thinking, "who's she the cat's mother?" as my mother used to say. We're talking about Samphire, which admittedly isn't her real name, but it is a name; a code-name.
Samphire gave me my code-name. Tantalum. Which I like a lot more than my real name, which is Clive. She's very good at code-names. I don't know who gave her Samphire; no-one gets to choose their own name...
Anyway, as I said, Samphire was born on Friday 13th, which wouldn't have bothered her one bit if other people hadn't kept going on about it whenever anything bad happened to her.
It was always worse just after an "F13" birthday. That's when people clocked. The worst was probably 1988 when she was 11; just that awkward age. And I guess that's why she had her glory years around the time of the millennium: since the leap year 400 rule meant that May 13th skipped from a Thursday in 1999 to a Saturday in 2000... yay, no F13 after 1994 until 2005.
Sorry, I'm nerding out on the dates and forgetting the point, again. I was with her, playing a very small part. Watching. Recording. I saw what happened. I was there.
Samphire was never happier than when we were on a mission. For a while it was just the 2 of us. Her and me. I remember one operation on South Aneurven. We had to capture and collect a scientist who the brass called The Kite. No other details.
Finding the place was tricky. But security was nil. Hardly anyone there. Went in at night when the staff were asleep. All except The Kite who was alone in the lab. White coat.
We expected a mousy character; but he was a big rugby playing bastard. It didn't faze Sam though. When he came at us with a knife she put him down with one punch to the body. Bam. Down like a sack of spuds.
After we packed and posted him I heard he had a ruptured spleen. I don't know what a spleen is or what it does... but a ruptured anything doesn't sound good. The brass said later that he died. Not clear if that was the spleen issue or what they did to him.
The mission was to get him. We got him. Boom. We win. Again. Another notch on the post for the Sam Squad.
Long John must have been recruited early in 2002. I was away on a secondment for 6 months. When I came back she was there, in my place. I honestly thought I'd been given the Spanish Archer. But Sam was quick to reassure me that we were expanding. LJ was some kind of specialist that we needed for "modern jobs". I don't know what that means. She never told me and I never asked.
There was something about her that never quite sat right with me. Don't get me wrong, I liked her. I liked her a lot. But. Just something. You know?
At the end of 2002 we found ourselves in Burundi trying to locate an "asset" who had accidentally got themselves mixed up in the civil war. As in they went to the wrong bloody place at the wrong time with the wrong people. It was a mess. Bigtime.
Sam warned us about the child soldiers. Trust no-one, she said. But did LJ listen? No, she didn't. The first time we had to shoot our way through something she hesitated and got shot in the leg by a boy who looked about 10. He could hardly hold the shooter, but the bullets still hurt.
We had to carry Long John out of that one. Spooky how she kind of kept the limp for years to go with her name...
Three was never the magic number for us, so we recruited another guy in 2003. He was called Pyrite and he was a total dickhead. I don't mean that in an affectionate way. He really was a liability at times. No idea why Sam picked him and less idea why she kept him around after he screwed up.
Once I caught them fighting one on one. Neither of them saw me. It was in the middle of the night, middle of nowhere. Must have been arranged in advance. I was only there because Sam has a tracker that only I can access and I was, well, snooping on her.
They fought to a standstill. It was brutal. He was stronger, she had the skill. They could both take a hit. Ouch. I almost gave myself away a couple of times. Slunk off when they seemed to be out of gas. Don't know how it ended.
As much as I doubted him, he did take a hit for me more than once. And for the rest of the team. Maybe that was his task. To take hits. Sam was great at finding people who didn't seem to fit, until they really had to.
Somehow the 4 of us came to be a good team. Well, effective at least.
So we got to 2005 and past the F13 birthday. All fine. Until it wasn't. Sam came to me at the end of May and I could see something was wrong. What's up boss? I asked. She told me the team was being disbanded. But there was a silver lining: our debts were paid. We could go. All of us.
That doesn't ever happen though, does it boss? I asked. She just looked at me. Expressionless. Except that said "no" as loudly as it could. I must have looked scared. I was scared. Very. She gave me a card and left without another word.
I watched her go then studied the card. It said "STLP Ltd" and there was a phone number. A faint line drawn in pencil made the "L" into an "O" if you squinted at it. Instead of going home I went to a quiet pub that I'd never been inside before... and called the number from a burner.
Sam answered. She said she was with Little John and Pyrite. Basically we were screwed. Officially we were "out", but we all knew that people who were out had a habit of falling off high buildings or dying from an overdose. Not straight away. But soon enough.
She had a plan. Imagined long ago and fine tuned as the years had crept by. Fuelled by the realisation of our situation. Step one was easy: we'd managed to "lose" a few valuables over the years; a watch here, a necklace there. All disappeared into the fog of war. Insignificant alone but tidy as a set.
Time to dig up the treasure, Long John.
Disappearing is easy if you know the trick. But the preparation takes time and, in the real world, is very expensive. A few pieces of silver were a fine start, but just seed money really.
I remember the first time we drank together Sam said something like "the best way to steal loads of money is to take it from people who have already lost it". We were both drunk. I said "gamblers?" and she just smiled. As with so many things after that, I filed it under "things Sam knows that I don't" and thought no more of it.
But I remembered a lot of those things in the weeks that followed. Because I was confused. Sam's plan, and I trusted that there was one, was just baffling. She had me and the other 2 doing all these apparently random tasks on a daily basis.
For example: one day she sent me to a bank; a very specific bank; and I had to get there at least 5 minutes before midday and not leave until at least 5 minutes after midday. She gave me a little box that looked a bit like a mobile phone but wasn't. All I had to do was be in the bank with the box in my pocket. I did it and the next day I got a message to throw the box in the river! End of.
My last task was just as odd. Buy a pineapple from a specific shop, take it to a specific set of lockers and lock it away. I did it and as I was leaving a man in a suit approached me. He asked me directions, which I gave, and he left. When I got home I took out the locker key and found there were 2 keys in my pocket. Attached to one was a small note that read "collect on Friday".
In the locker was a large white envelope with "RIP Clive Turner" written in small letters by the corner where a stamp would have gone. Inside were documents and photos. All about me. But my name was Terry Chambers. There was an address and a Land Registry printout that showed I had bought the place in 1997. There were council tax receipts for every year since.
After my "relocation" I spent a fair bit of my time casually checking newspapers and the then-new social media sites. Keeping my head down, but not obviously so. Hiding without looking like I was hiding. As trained.
About 6 months later I saw it. My obituary. Clive Turner, 33, found dead in his home of a suspected overdose. There was an old photo of me. Except not one that I remember anyone ever taking. I looked well and was actually smiling.
After that I slowly expanded my life. Spent a little bit of the money that had been in my account waiting. Not too much. I shaved off the beard, which never suited me.
Checking the obituaries and keeping an eye open for reports of sudden deaths became a habit. Of course I didn't know the others' real names: Samphire, Long John and Pyrite.
Time crept on and I got through a mid-life crisis and settled into my 50s. One day I noticed a story in the local "paper" about a doctor from this area who was involved in what counted as a "scandal" for my neighbours. It didn't seem like much at first: he'd been found to have misrecorded the time of death for some patients.
Apparently he'd had 3 patients die in the early hours of Friday 13th one time and decided that it would be kinder to the families to record them as just before midnight on the 12th. After that it became a bit of a habit. He was finally discovered when someone noticed that he always insisted on having any shifts that spilled into an F13; and when they checked he'd certified 2 deaths at 11:59 for patients at opposite ends of the hospital.
My interest piqued at the mention of F13. So I did a bit of digging into the case. Not really expecting to find anything. And maybe I didn't. But there was a woman recorded to have died at 11:51 on Thursday 12th May 2011. If she actually died the next day then that was Sam's birthday. Her 34th. The name was Dee Peters. Her age was given as 33.
Annoyingly I couldn't find a cause of death or any photos. And wasn't 2011 a bit late for her to "die"? My death and I presume the others had been a good 5 years earlier. But F13, come on, that was poetic wasn't it?
By the time I hit my mid-50s it all seemed a distant memory. My life was very normal. I'd always wanted to go to Glastonbury but never done anything about it... until I won some tickets in a draw for 2025. Some friends came with me. It was very loud and very crowded. I felt strangely safe, somehow.
On the Saturday night we'd just seen Raye and I was looking forward to Neil Young. My friends had gone for drinks so I was saving our spot. My mind was wandering. I was happy. But still a little sad, as usual. The person standing behind me leaned forward and her lips lightly touched my ear as she spoke: "Hello Tan".