by elle`attend
FOR MATURE READERS ONLY
The overpowering smells of the city had changed very little in over three millennia.
The yeasty scent of bread baking in clay ovens, mixing with the fetid smell of dog feces; the sharp tang of freshly made hummus blending with the pungent scent of goat, and fermenting wheat beer. The clean bite of wood smoke from a thousand cooking fires in a thousand mud walled kitchens; the heavy odor of drying dates sweetening and ameliorating the rank smell of unwashed human bodies. The weedy aroma of the harbor in the morning, of salt, and kelp and mussels wafting up through the streets. Then in the evening the clean, purifying blast of heat from the desert, pouring back down those same hot, dusty avenues, like the judgments of the old gods - Wesir, and Bastet, and Aset herself, the Mistress of Magic, the Soul of the Great River. City of Cleopatra and Antony, Julius Caesar and Alexander, Imhotep and Tutenkamen, of Manning, and of Durrell.
Into this torrent of sights, sounds and smells is dropped another innocent offering, to be swept along on its currents, for good, or ill.
Jolie struggled up the steep sloping avenue from the harbor, the strap of her carryall digging into her shoulder and her calf muscles threatening at every step to throw the mother of all cramps, and drop her right into some pile of dog crap here in the street, for God’s sake. So far, her ‘exotic Mediterranean idyll’ had been anything but idyllic.
“We’re sending you to Alexandria first, Jolie,” Erica Galloway had said, keying in the reservation codes. “Bea wants you to get your feet wet at our facility there first, get a feel for the flavor of the region, and our operations in that part of the world.” She gave a last tap on the ‘enter’ key, and the printer began humming quietly, spitting out the girl’s itinerary.
“Then, in a few weeks, we’ll send you on to our bureau in Delos, dear.” Erica slipped her reading glasses off, and twirled them playfully in her left hand as she smiled at Jolie.
“Don’t forget to take your bikinis, darling…or monokinis, I guess I should say. You won’t be needing the tops in Delos.” She smiled suggestively at the young woman across the desk. “Makes my mouth water,” she added, letting her eyes wander down to Jolie’s shirt front again. “Wish I was coming with.”
Yeah, right, Jolie fumed, as the dusty, baking street got, incredibly, even steeper. I wish you’d come, too…you could tote this friggin’ bag for me…
She glanced again at the slip of damp, crumpled paper in her fist, with the address of WISDOM’s Alexandria office printed on it. Only trouble with that was, someone had forgotten to tell the Egyptians to put numbers on the Gee-dee buildings. Jolie swore softly under her breath as she let the bag slip from her aching shoulder, and put both palms to the small of her back, arching, and stretching the stiff muscles there. This place had damned well better have a shower, she fumed, as she felt the perspiration running in torrents beneath her blouse, darkening the waistband of her tan skirt, even trickling down her thighs. She plucked at the soaked front of her shirt, wishing she had heeded Erica’s admonitions about dress standards in a predominately Islamic culture. But it had been too hot on the boat to wear much of anything, let alone foundation garments. She was regretting that decision already, as she looked down at her sodden blouse, with her nipples looking as though they were painted on it. She sighed, and shouldered her bag again, this time the left one, hoping that by balancing the agony, one pain might cancel out the other.
She trudged stubbornly on up the never-ending avenue.
**********
“She’s given you nothing? Nothing at all?”
“Aside from a few pointed witticisms regarding the ancestry of my debriefer, and some useless names, obviously decoys and expendables, no, nothing. Absolutely bugger all. She is enormously strong.” There was a long pause, and then she continued.
“It’s obvious that the information we are seeking is planted far too deeply for us to get at through ‘conventional’ methods, without breaching her conditioning…” The woman let that hang on the ether between them as well, giving the other time to chew on it, to consider all of the possible implications.
The voice on the other end came back at last.
“No. Not yet. It’s too dangerous; there are too many unknowns in that particular equation.” The voice paused again. The woman could almost hear the wheels turning at the other end of the connection.
“But there may be another way…There’s a girl coming your way, she should be there by now in fact. She’ll be staying at the Hotel Mercuré, but she’s been told to check in first at WISDOM’s offices. Now here’s what I want you to do…”
**********
The room was washed in the pale golds and soft sepia shadows of the Aegean twilight, and the lamp’s glow was not yet visible on the ceiling above the bed.
I rolled my head languorously to one side, brushing my lips against the silky warmth of the girl’s skin, nuzzling at the hollow between her neck and shoulder, drinking in her scent, her taste, her essence.
But it was Jolie I was thinking of.
Sabrina was sleeping, her arm thrown carelessly across my breasts, her breath warm against my ear. My desire for her was a lance piercing my loins, sharp and exquisite; but my wrists and ankles were bound once more to the four corners of the bed. I tugged uselessly at the scarves holding them every now and again, and whimpered like a small child who has been deprived of a favorite toy.
My need was like a living thing in the room, a beast hovering above us in the steamy miasma that we had created with our smells, our sounds, our heat; enveloping us like a womb. I gave a little strangled sob, and sank my teeth gently into the suddenly irresistibly erotic swell of her trapezius muscle. I felt her eyelashes flutter against my cheek, and heard the low murmuring of her sleepy laugh as she buried her tongue in my ear.
I nearly exploded.
I had never experienced my body in this way before; never touched excitements so powerful, so transforming, so close to the core of my being. It was as if the scales had suddenly dropped from my eyes, allowing me to look into myself, into aspects of my being that I had been all but unaware existed. Some of these places aroused me beyond imagining. Others terrified me, in a way that I could never have explained. Some of them I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to visit again.
Others I was afraid I would never want to leave.
I moaned pathetically as Sabrina’s wet tongue slithered slowly out of my ear. She swung her right leg over me, bringing her knee down next to my left ear, and then positioned the other one beside my right, pinning my shoulders to the bed. My nose began to twitch like a bunny rabbit’s as she lowered her aromatic folds to just beyond the range of my tongue. I cursed its stunted nature and moaned again, more wretchedly this time.
Smiling angelically down into my hectic, flushed face, Sabrina slid a hand down my stomach, then slipped two of her extraordinarily talented fingers into my sticky honeypot, already beginning to ripple with those long, slow undulations that I was learning to associate with the beginning of the end of my sanity. As she leaned back to fondle me, her hips slipped lower, and forward, moving her pelvis closer to my panting lips. I nearly dislocated my shoulders diving for her sex, burying my tongue in her fragrant crease. She drove her pussy at me, forcing my head back down onto the coverlet, arching her back, and digging the nails of one hand into my breast while she continued playing me like a concert pianist with the other. Sabrina was a truly gifted arsonist; I now willingly handed her the matches as she set about burning me down.
Given our state, it was really not very remarkable that neither of us heard the door opening.
“Subordinating the life of the intellect to the more urgent needs of the inner animal, are we?”
Cassandra Bétancort smiled coldly as she stepped across the threshold, closing the door quietly behind her.
**********
Jolie rapped out an annoyed percussion solo on the receptionist’s desk with her chewed-to-the-quick nails as she waited for the woman to return. Her patience, and her nerves, were a frayed string perilously close to snapping. At last the door through which the woman had disappeared nearly fifteen minutes earlier opened, and she stepped through, smiling that insincere smile which seemed to be standard equipment for so many women in her line of work.
“So sorry to keep you waiting Ms…Ms…” she glanced quickly down at the slip of paper in her hand, then back at Jolie, her smile never dimming, nor warming a watt. “Ms Bennett.”
“Yeah, right…so what’s the deal here? I mean, I’m hot, and I’m tired, and I’d LIKE to get a shower, and change, and get something to eat before the second coming if it’s at all possible…” Jolie tossed her damp hair irritably, fist poised on an outthrust hip. She was spoiling for a fight with anyone at this point, even this frost-free freezer of a blonde corporate roadblock. Just looking at this woman’s flawlessly made up face, and perfectly coiffed hair made Jolie feel sweaty, and dirty, and just subtly inferior in general.
“I understand entirely, Ms Bennett,” the blonde replied, her glossy, immaculately outlined vermillion lips making a theatrically insincere moue of commiseration with Jolie’s plight. “But unfortunately, Ms Yenadou is out of the office at the moment, and the director is tied up in a rather important teleconference just now. But she instructed me to do anything I can for you, and make certain that you have everything that you require.” She paused, and scribbled something on a sheet of paper, tearing it from the pad and handing it to Jolie.
“Here is the address of the Hotel Mercuré. They’re holding a suite for you there. I’ve called a taxi, and Ms Yenadou will send a car for you this evening at seven sharp. In the meantime, if you need anything at all, please don’t hesitate to call me at once; I’ve written this number down as well…” she indicated with her pen the bottom of the sheet now in Jolie’s hand, her glittering smile now one of dismissal.
“Thanks a bunch,” Jolie muttered, crumpling the sheet of paper and thrusting it into the pocket of her skirt. She shouldered her bag onto her now-numbed shoulder, and retreated down the steps and through the door back into the blast furnace of the street, her eyes scanning it for the taxi.
**********
Two hours later, Jolie was immersed to her nostrils in a steaming tub filled with bath salts and fragrant oils, letting the water draw the aches and the frustrations of the day from her exhausted body. She gazed lazily around the tiled bath, all solid-brass fixtures and gold-veined marble, and nearly as large as her entire apartment back home.
This is the life, alright, she said drowsily to herself, reaching a languid arm out of the tub and bringing the champagne flute to her lips. I could get used to THIS in a hurry. These people know how to travel; I’ll give ‘em that. If Vannie could see me now…
The thought of her friend brought her back to earth a bit. She thought back to her last visit to Van’s house, just before she had caught her plane for Athens. She had gone to say goodbye to her friend, maybe gloat just a teensy bit about her autumn sabbatical in the Mediterranean. Show Vannie that she wasn’t the only jet setter in this friendship. Instead, Van’s pale, tight-lipped and unshaven husband had answered the door.
“Where’s Vannie, Brian?” she asked, taken somewhat aback at finding Van’s bond-trader husband at home on a weekday morning.
The man just looked at her, with a rather nasty smirk on his drawn face. “Why don’t you tell me, Jolie? Your crowd would be more apt to know the answer to that question than me, don’t you think?” He turned away from the door dismissively, but left it open behind him. Jolie trailed him into the foyer.
“What do you mean, ‘my crowd’? And where IS she, anyway?” Jolie craned her neck, looking into the sunken living room, then toward the archway that led through the dining room into the kitchen. “And where are the kids?”
Brian made no reply, but gestured toward the escritoire along the foyer wall and a sheet of paper on it, as he retreated across the blue slate entry hall into the dining room. Jolie moved to the desk, and picked up the sheet of paper.
‘Dear Brian,
Everything is just getting too hard, too complicated…I feel that I simply have to get away by myself for a while, and sort things out if we’re to have any chance at all of working out our problems. I’ve taken the kids to Sarah’s; she’s agreed to look after them while I’m gone.
I’ll call you when I feel that I can talk about all this rationally. Please don’t be angry, and please don’t try and locate me. I just need some time, and some space darling.
I’ll talk to you soon.
Love,
Van’
“I don’t get it, Brian…where would she have gone? I mean, I just saw her yesterday afternoon, and she never dropped the faintest hint about leaving or anything. I don’t understand…”
Brian looked up with a bitter smile. “You don’t understand, eh? What about me? Sure she isn’t shacking at your place, Jolie, or with one of your lesbian girlfriends?” His tone dripped with sarcasm, wounded pride, and frustrated anger.
“I’m not even going to dignify a remark like that with an answer, you incredible jerk. If Vannie needs some space, you oughta just give it to her, an’ be glad that she hasn’t left your sorry, self-pitying ass long ago, like she ought to have.” Jolie spun on her heel, and stormed from the house, slamming the front door furiously for good measure, halfway hoping that the Noritake china serving platter in the hutch over Brian’s head might fall on it.
Nah, she thought on reflection. That’s Vannie’s favorite piece…
The phone in the suite burred insistently, jolting her out of her reverie. Damn, she swore softly to herself. Seven already? She dragged herself reluctantly from the tub, wrapped a thick Egyptian cotton bathsheet around herself, and headed for the phone, dripping across the expensive Caucasian rug.
She never knew what caused the sudden power failure that plunged the room, and her, into total darkness...
**********
© MEB 2002