All characters, events depicted in this story are fictional.
A Slight Career Hiccup By Alice Dee
Catullus 97
"It's just like taking a shit," he said.
Suddenly I had a whole new bunch of really rather revolting images to go with his cheeky gap toothed grin and the homespun threadbare charm of his clothes. Now I had to be able to see him straining away at a big crap while I looked at him standing there in front of me bobbing up and down in his nervousness as he smiled vacuously at me. This was pretty bad. I mean. He was bad enough even if you put a brave face on things. Like the "homespun threadbare charm of his clothes" does not really take in to account that the clothes were threadbare because he had been wearing them and because he had been wearing them, he hadn't been washing them. As far as that went, the other way of saying "cheeky gap toothed grin" is to say "slimy smile with a set of teeth that looked like the Jewish section in a Nazi churchyard. " As far as that goes, his teeth smelt like Nazis. Well, like I always imagine that Nazi's smell not having ever really met any, living as I do in a relatively enlightened corner of the world.
His teeth though, they hadn't been brushed in a longish while, if ever, and there was a deep and abiding aroma of ripe fish hanging around his mouth like a haze. In a way it was a pity that the haze wasn't thicker, since it would have masked his unshaven chin, his pockmarked cheeks and his bright red drinkers nose. In situations like these though, the only thing that you can ever really do is to put a brave face on things and I decided to ignore that I could smell him from where he stood. As far as that goes, "smell him" was an understatement. The reek was making me light headed. I could catalogue the smells. His teeth, for a start. Whenever he opened his mouth either to giggle or to blind me with his wit the smell of his rotting teeth became almost too much to bear. The rest of the time the stench of unwashed tobacco clothes, fetid sweaty body and dirty feet was the one to contend with. I found that I was wondering quite faintly exactly what his penis and scrotum smelt like. I didn't like the way that that particular thought felt so quiet and dreamy. I wondered whether I was going to have an attack of the vapours right where I stood and simply pass out, right exactly where I stood in the dark corner just near the rack, over from the stocks and the pillory.
I knew that passing out would be a mistake. While my dear old Gran had been quite given to the vapours she had been quite sensible about passing on good advice too, and one thing that she had said to me, over and over again, as I was growing up was "better the devil you know." In this case, I agreed with her. Passing out here would be a major mistake. Passing out anywhere nowadays is not that safe an activity but passing out here, in the "sex magic dungeon" in dank sub - sub - sub basement club was absolutely guaranteed to be a bad move. A big time bad move.
No. I was going to have to get over the smell, smile sweetly, drop to my knees, and open this man's pants. That done, I was going to open my mouth and suck on his penis until he ejaculated in my mouth. I was going to give the best blow job that I was capable of giving, and when it was done, I was going to swallow his sperm, smile sweetly and help him to sit down.
More than that, I was going to do all this without gagging at the stench and while pretending that I thought that he was Tom Cruise's hotter twin brother. Not that I would EVER suck off Tom Cruise, though. A girl has to have some standards. And that guy may be cute, but I think he is creepy, creepy, creepy. Um. "Could I reconsider that last part?" I thought. At least "Tom" looks like he washes. I had just caught a glimpse of this guy's fingernails. The bits that weren't blue with bad circulation looked like cigarette filters.
This guy was REALLY pretty bad. It was almost funny, except that it wasn't really funny at all. Here I was in a filthy dark basement that smelt of sex, about to suck on the first cock of my life. The cock in question belonged to a man who looked like Diogenes' filthy flat mate, and now, to make matter worse, he was telling me that his ejaculating in my mouth was going to be "just like him taking a shit." Except out of his broken toothed, fish stench mouth his thick Kiwi accent made it sound like "ert jez laak tekkin er sheet." It was almost more than I could bear. I still have no idea what form of demented politeness it was that made me open my dewy wet PoppyKing "RoseLust"(tm) mouth and ask him, breathlessly (believe me, I was breathless) what he meant by that. I found that I felt like I was some dowager duchess and he was , for a moment, a worthy peasant, smelling, shall we say, of the fields. For a wonderful moment, I was Margaret Dumont, and he was the forgotten smelly Marx brother, Reeky, and none of any of this nightmare was real. Maybe the smell was making me mad.
He looked almost shocked. Up to this moment I had not spoken, and now he found an obviously educated ear for his theory. More than that, he found an interested attractive person. Who was going to have sex with him. I could see that like all people with poor personal hygiene he had no friends, and having no one to talk to meant that he had no one to tell his theory too, either. From his point of view, the evening was shaping up magnificently.
From my point of view, well, from my point of view, it wasn't so good. As I stood there watching him collect his thoughts, I found myself wondering how the fuck I had ended up here, in this ocean of shit, just as the tide was coming in. If I was any judge of time, it had only taken five short hours for my life to fall apart. They had been a busy five hours, too.
That morning had been a good one. It was easy to say that I had the world at my feet, but when you consider where I live, it was a valid enough statement. The first thing that I saw as I opened my eyes was the Sydney Harbour bridge. It was just dawn, and the arch was just turning an almost invisibly delicate shade of pink. The arch lights were still on and offset the foggy light of the early morning sun and the few visible car headlights quite wonderfully. The harbour itself was still shrouded in the last pockets of the night and in an almost invisible sea mist. The view was utterly calm and from the depths of my imported goose down quilt, (800 pounds online from Harrods and worth every single penny thank you) as far as I was concerned, the view was the best thing in the world. It was simultaneously very, very, pretty and also a complete celebration of my life and more importantly, of my money.
It was my favourite time of the day. The harbour was deserted and I could almost believe that I owned it. In my dreamy state I would tell myself that it wouldn't be long before I did. After all, everything was on my side. My fortune had reached the point where I could no longer deny that no matter what happened it could only grow, and the growth would have to be exponential. I had just been made junior partner in Greibner, Brogen and Arenba, and there was no doubt that full partner hood was probably only a matter of months. I was really rich, I was going to get even richer, there was no limit. I was just turning thirty-two. I was slim, fit, and attractive. I had never had a day's sickness in my life, and I was probably the most desired eligible bachelor in the city. The gossip rags were full of tales of my "startling" green eyes, and my "lithe figure." My polo scores in games with the sons of media magnates were a matter of weekly record, and my sailing victories with the sons of other media magnates were. just as well known. I had framed my favourite mention of me in the social pages of the Sydney's most popular paper. I got the headline. It said simply, "Kyyle Duneland: Sydney's Prince Charming." The rest of the page was taken up with an image of me charming the pants off a young lady who was soon to become minor royalty. Of course, the actual "pants off" part had been missed by the photographer of the paper, seeing as it had happened somewhat later that night and across the harbour from the party in the Ambassador suite of one of Sydney's smaller but most exclusive hotels. A hotel, I am happy to say, I owned just about thirty percent of.
The "pants off" bit had been all right though, if a bit uninspired. The video came out well, though, which was a consolation.
I had hung that framed page where I could look at it at exactly the same time as I stared at my favourite view in the world. The Harbour Bridge, and me. The best view in the world.
Life was pretty damned good.
It was a ritual with me. When the 5:01 ferry left wharf seven on its way to Mosman, I got out of bed. Unless there was a strike. Then, I would get out of bed at 5.02 when the alarm in my black and red "U2" commemoration iPod went off through the Harmon Kardon surround sound speakers above my bed. When up I would first urinate then Hannah would have breakfast ready for me in the breakfast area. Strawberries, organic oats, and thinly sliced Aitkin's Sourdough Rye Bread toasted brown and spread with royal jelly. Black coffee from the special Harrods blend that they make up for me, and the laptop already open to a selection of the morning papers. At my time in life, I like breakfast to be just exactly the way that I want it, after all, I deserve nothing less. After eating I relax myself for a few minutes and stare at the view as I enjoy my coffee. If I have woken with an erection I would have Hannah fellate me as I sat in my breakfast chair staring at all the poor people dealing with Sydney public transport. I was usually horny and I found that I usually achieve orgasm about the time that the morning sun strikes the water and makes the harbour look like beaten gold. I used to like reflecting at those moments that the world was literally at my feet. This morning I had come directly down Hannah's throat. She had not coughed or gurgled or even jumped. She did exactly as she was told when she was hired. She looked directly into my eyes and opened her mouth to show me that she had swallowed all of my seed, and said, "Thank you, Sir" without blinking or letting her eyes waver from mine. I like that. It reminds me of school and Hannah always does it very well. If slightly robotically. She is only twenty-two but she is very very good at what she does. After all, I pay her enough. You have to when you deserve the best.
After breakfast, I have exactly three minutes in the multi-point needle shower with the water at twenty degrees to wake me up, followed by ten minutes on the cross trainer while watching the market reports on cable. Then a fifteen-minute session with the building masseuse and ten more minutes in the shower but with the water now at 45 degrees to relax my muscles. Hannah looks after my bathing and once a week depilates me. I like my body as smooth as possible. I find it more appealing, and I find that I play squash better right after a good depilation.
Since today had been a Monday, it was the blue Lyndon pin stripe single button worsted. Saville Row simply cannot deliver better. I like Mondays.
After that, it was five-minute walk to the Bridge Street offices of the Arenba Building and a short hop up 40 stories in the VIP lift and a few words with Otis, the liveried flunky. A rich source of street humour is Otis and I always give him a hundred dollars at Christmas. I have an office directly in the middle of the city side of the fortieth floor, meaning that I look out down Pitt Street. On a clear day I can actually see almost as far as Central station. It is not a corner office and it does not look out over the Harbour but I am there to work, not look at the view, as I have been quoted as saying, and as far as that goes, I find watching the ants in the street rather more work inspiring than watching the Harbour, which in the sun always reminds me of my 35 foot ketch "Marigold." And I like to keep my work life and my leisure life separate as far as possible.
In the office the work is easy enough, if you know what you are doing and you have the sort of gift for it that I do. Simply put I buy and sell shares in large office buildings. Sometimes I buy or sell the large office buildings themselves, but not that often. The actual buildings themselves generate too much legal type paper, and legal paper is noting but hassle. Sometimes I only trade the insurance policies relating to the buildings and sometimes only the air rights above them. I always seem to sell at a profit and I have gone from the humble five million dollar fortune that my parents left to being worth something over three hundred million dollars today, depending on the markets. It's a hard business though. If you fuck up, you can lose big time, but business is all about making the other guy fuck up, and if you don't like him, making it as bad as possible for him in the process. I've been in the business just over fourteen years and I have seen a few people fall really hard. Sometimes it is actually quite funny.
That side of the business does not actually take up that much time, except when there is a big deal on. When things are just bubbling along I spend my time doing tasks related to the five boards that I sit on, and to dealing with matters related to the legal proceedings surrounding the collapse of the phone company that I was briefly associated with a few years back. The days can be busy, but they are rarely really hectic. There is always time for a good lunch, and sometimes the lunches can become dinners. As the man says, "its a hard life, but someone has to do it."
I walked into the office that morning at exactly 6.45am with my mind already quite taken up with the minutiae of a deal I had been cooking for a couple of weeks. It was a sweet enough plan to swap the tunnel rights under half a block of downtown Castlereagh Street for a sixty percent interest in the futures on some of the insurance policies related to parts of Sydney airport freight handling facility. The Lebanese company who wanted the tunnel rights were more than pleased to take the time necessary to screw the Sydney Council for some back handers down the line, which was something which I couldn't do if I wanted to remain lily white, and at the same time I had an inkling that world situation was going to make the futures on the policies gain value hand over fist within about six months. After all, its my business to know stuff people don't know, and one of my school chums is now quite high up in the Foreign Office in London. And I am very good friends with him. We talk on the phone quite a lot. All up the whole thing looked to be worth about three mill over two years, which at a total investment of about a week was pretty good shit, by anyone's odds. I honestly think that international terrorism is the best thing to happen to international trade, and the especially the markets since the Korean War. If they ever catch Osama, in six months the world economy will melt down.
Mr Arenba ("call me Frank") had been tickled pink about the fact that the council was going to get screwed on the tunneling rights but that we would remain unsullied by the shitstorm that was sure to hit the pages of Sydney's more "socially aware" media. Frank always likes a nice show. Preferably one with blood, and he hates councils with a passion, "penny ante blackmailers" is about the nicest quote he has ever delivered on the subject and as far as he was concerned if the free market could take over the business of government he would be a very happy man. If the council were going to get to look corrupt Frank would be very pleased. If I was responsible that would be major brownie points. Damn but I was hot.
Of course, I saved the best bit for me. I was cut in for ten percent off the top of the airport stuff, off the record and under the desk. That would be about 200K that Greinber, Brogen and Arenba would never hear about, tax free and tasty and just for me. It all comes in handy, but the best bit was always having that little extra bit of iron in the fire. It made the game more interesting.
The morning didn't quite pan out like I expected though. As you can probably guess. The rest of my life was looking rather less predictable too, as far as that went.
The first thing that I always do when I first arrive at the office is to check through the emails that have arrived overnight. While most of my business directly concerns Sydney and its environs, my clients travel extensively and their input can arrive at any hour of the day or night. Its a rare morning where I don't get at least five or ten pieces that need immediate attention, after the spam has been sifted through. It was different, four emails, all showing up as having been already read sitting forlornly in the in box. No spam. At all. That was so unlikely as to be impossible, you see I refuse to have anything to do with the GB&A tech team, and their attempts at filtration. I remove my own spam myself. After all, some of the stuff I get only looks like spam to the untrained eye. It's amazing how much information can be gleaned from the right "penis power" email ... when you have exactly the right software.
For there to be only four boilerplate emails and no spam in my inbox meant either that the internet was broken, or the dolts in tech services had included me in another of their filtration attempts (in which case I would have somebody's job). I was betting on option two and mentally sharpening my teeth when the interoffice phone rang.
It was Tom Brogen's secretary.
That was really odd. Greibner and I were the early birds at GB&A, and even our secretaries didn't show up before 7.30, for Tom to be on deck at, I checked my watch, 6.53am, something must surely be seriously up. For his secretary to be there too, whatever it was had to be big, and liable to make a very loud noise should it come down unexpectedly. It probably had something to do with the emails and that could be bad. GB&A do somewhere over a billion dollars a year, for us to be hacked could well be a disaster. I snapped, "OK" at the Olga and headed towards the West corner office.
Don't get me wrong. I like Olga. She is a thorough going hardbody and dresses like a super-vixen, but ever since she made herself clear on where she stood on the subject of interoffice romance, I have kept everything on a strictly business basis. After all, she isn't my secretary and Tom seems quite pleased with her work, even though I think that he could actually do quite a lot better.
That early in the morning the corridors are empty of the crush of staff who start arriving after eight am. It is a time of day that I like rather a lot. I can hear my feet on the thick wool carpets and the early morning sun makes very pleasant patterns through the harbourside windows. The place just reeks of money. It looked like it was going to be a very pleasant day. I nodded brusquely to Olga and strode into Tom's office.
I was actually quite shocked. Tom was there, and so was Neville Greibner. Last I had heard he wasn't supposed to get back from his holiday in Turkey for another two weeks. Odder still than that was that Norman Gallaher the head of legal was there and also turd Dick Balston head of IT. Dick, bless his heart, looked like he had been up all night and been having a hard time of it. His eyes were red rimmed and what hair he had was sadly awry. I found the sight pleasing. He just kept banging away on the desk terminal and only glanced up when I came in.
"Good morning, Dick" I said and I smiled at the side of his head. Life's little pleasures. "Neville. Tom. Norm. How are things?" I looked around at the array of coffee stains and crumbs on the cedar furniture. It looked like Olga was keeping the worst of the debris from a long night at bay, but drew the line at wiping surfaces. I didn't change my mind about the standard of her work. That said, I didn't change my mind about how good her lips would look wrapped around my cock, either.
It looked like the boys had made a night of it here in Tom's office. I didn't much like that. After all, I was junior partner, and I didn't like the idea that I could be excluded from important stuff. That isn't the way to get rich. Then again, if it was a shitstorm, the further from the drama, the better, is usually the case.
But no matter what is actually happening, it's always a good idea to appear to be quick on the uptake.
"Where's Frank?" I asked. I raised an eyebrow at the scene.
They looked at each other. Norm shifted his vast watery gut around in his chair and stared at his feet for a while before raising his bleary boozers eyes and staring at me with a fish like look in his eye. He seemed to have been elected spokesman.
"Frank doesn't want to know you, Kyyle," he said.
I sat down.
There wasn't anything to say. So I just looked at Norm and waited for him to continue. "There's a problem Kyyle, " he said. "In fact, there are a few problems. In fact," he sighed heavily and rubbed his hand across is face, "In fact today is Monday and there are a truckload of problems, and they are all yours."
Tom seemed to be jumping out of his chair. He had crossed his legs and was swinging his foot up and down increasingly violently. The movement was exposing rather a lot of hairless pale calf and his entire almost sheer black sock. His eyes had gotten beady, and he looked like he was just about ready to burst with his won pugnacious self-importance. If there was anything on earth that Tom liked more than pillorying people I had not heard anything about it. It looked like Tom had me over his open sights and I had no idea of what I was going to be hit with.
Well, I had an idea but absolutely no suspicion as to how bad things had gotten since Friday evening. How about that? All weekend, I had been falling down an elevator shaft and didn't even know it. Now here I was starting to get a good look at the sharpened spikes waiting at the bottom.
Tom couldn't restrain himself any longer. "You're fucked Kyyle!" he yapped. "We have been on the job since Saturday night, and we've got you cracked open like the mollusk you are." I had seen him being a spiteful prick before but never right in my face. It wasn't a nice look. He was obviously just getting up to speed when Norm overrode him with a short guttural cough. Tom sat back and looked slightly chastened. It was never a good idea to be seen to be losing control, after all.
He was right. It was fucked. To cut a long story short, and to remove the worst of Brogen's crowing, Frank Arenba had pulled the chain on me on Saturday afternoon. He'd rung Greibner and Gallaher on a conference call and described shall we say, certain discrepancies in matters relating to me. He had then collapsed in some sort of a diabetic crisis and was now incommunicado in the private wing of Saint Vincent's hospital. No visitors, condition serious, family only, I was definitely not welcome.
These three fucks had not even had time to visit him yet. They were still far too busy going over the books. Gallaher had made a list of the places where the Police were liable to be interested in my activities. Well, more than just interested. Worse than that, the talent less idiot Dick Balston seemed to have tumbled to the fact that not all of the spam I received was actually spam. Worse than that, he seemed to have the process half cracked. I wondered whether he had someone who actually knew something about computers secreted under the desk, or perhaps in a cupboard nearby. I wouldn't have thought the idiot had it in him. If he actually worked that out properly I would be completely and totally overcooked.
Suddenly, I felt queasy about exactly how safe those codes actually were. It got really ugly, then it got recriminatory, Greibner had to stop Brogen trying to hit me. You get the idea. The whole shambles went on until just after lunch. It was pretty loud, and I don't imagine that much work got done anywhere on our floor that day. The bottom line was that they had only found about one hundred and forty million of the moolah that seemed to have fallen into my umbrella over the last two years. They had missed the Caymans, but they had caught on with the Luxembourg scam. I suppose I had Dick Balston to thank for that mainly, I had thought that the Cayman's were as obvious as a nutsack in a martini glass, but he had missed it. What with one thing and another I should have thanked him, but it was pure dumb luck, mainly. Even if I did jail time, I would be comfortable when I got out. If you can call about 160 mill comfortable, that is.
Better than that, I knew a few places were I had a really bloody good idea that the odd body might be buried. The way that Neville practically spat in my eye when I casually mentioned the fact that I (piously) had no interest in oil futures in the Ukraine made me sure that I had him over some sort of proverbial pork barrel. Norm, well, Norm and I had been out with a few clients. All I had to do with Norma was ring his wife and tell her what a naught boy Norman was and "Big Norm" would run out and punch a cop to get away from her. Desiree Gallaher was not, repeat, not, a woman to be trifled with. Brogen? Well, nothing really, but anyone that fucked up had to have a guilty conscience. Anyway, when I started to rattle the bars of their cages and they started to see sense. Old Tom got really quiet, and his eyes got really round, and his adams apple started bobbing. So I just ignored him. He looked grateful. All I can say is I hope the stupid fuck gets involved in a few high stakes poker games.
The happy roundup?
No police, get out, never darken our etceteras, this town, blah blah. This town, my arsehole. In this town, I thought, I am a fucking altar boy.
So, hit the street, do not pass your office, get the fuck out, this man is from is security, do not let the door hit your ass on the way out. I was escorted out, wearing the clothes on my back, and hit the pavement on Bridge Street at just after two. My head was spinning. The footpath was crammed with office workers and fat American tourists in search of lunch.
Suddenly, I had nowhere to go, and nothing much to do.
No. Scratch that. I had to get to a computer and make absolutely sure that...
"Mr Dunelands."
I looked up. The speaker was about six inches taller than me, sharp face, and white blond hair in a short crop. Designer sunglasses. Oakley's. This season. The face of someone who will strangle their mother for a surprisingly small amount of money. Nice coat. Camel hair. "Mr Dunelands, you will come with me, please."
I couldn't really place his accent, and that was one of the many reasons that there was no way in the world I was just wandering off with him. This guy was creepy. I suppose that he saw the growth of rebellion in my face. He motioned slightly with his head and suddenly I was completely surrounded in a wall of camel hair overcoats. And hats. And sunglasses. About a second and a half after that I was sitting in the back seat of a plush mini bus with George Street moving past, murkily, outside the deeply smoked windows.
Mainly, I was relieved. There was no way that this mini bus was the police. Far too classy for the New South Wales wallopers. No. This bunch were something else. I spent most of my short trip in that van in a state of slight embarrassment that I was not wearing a camel hair overcoat and sunglasses. I felt like I had committed some social faux pax that no one had ever lived long enough to invent a name for.
There was one thing that I was completely sure of. There was no way that these hired goons, and they were definitely hired goons, there was no way that they were local. They didn't look dumb enough, and they were showing no desire to talk about cricket with each other, in fact, they showed no desire other than to watch me, which was undoubtedly what they were being paid to do. Definitely not local. About the time that I was seriously considering starting to smart off, the mini bus made a silent smooth left and started down the ramps to the parking garages under the biggest apartment block in the downtown area. I was interested by this. You see, I had actually been down this ramp before, about six months earlier, when they were building the place. My tunneling rights, well, they were still my tunneling rights, well they were someone's tunneling rights, it was hard to keep up with exactly whose tunneling rights they were, started about five feet the other side of that... WRENCH. The van turned hard down the ramp. Correction, started the other side of THAT concrete wall. We turned twice more before the van came to a stop in the deepest level of the private section of the garage. The place echoed to the sound of our slamming doors and the air still smelled grittily of fresh concrete. I was somewhat surprised that we all fitted in the lift at the same time. But I wasn't scared, much.
After all, it was obvious that someone wanted to speak with me, and that that someone was as rich as fuck. I racked my brains trying to remember names of people who owned property in this block, and simultaneously laughed at myself, the really rich only have names when they want them. Each floor the lift went up, I was more impressed and more interested. Money, you see has a way of rubbing off, and I was already way down on this morning. Maybe things were starting to look better.
The lift stopped at the penthouse. I should have expected it. After all, in situations like this doesn't the lift always stop at the penthouse?
Very nice. Heavy European corporate. Thick rugs, recessed lights, smoked glass, the odd gold wall, what looked like a couple of busts by Epstein in some sconces in one of the walls. I shook off the overcoats and walked closer. Yes. Given their surroundings they were almost undoubtedly originals. One of Bomber Harris and one of Paul Robeson. Odd. Either my host had a thing for big bull necked men, or some quite odd political theories.
"Why, Mr Dunelands, how nice to finally meet you!" The voice was cultured, smooth and almost devoid of an accent that I couldn't quite place. As accents go, it went with the face, and I couldn't place that either, and I hate to be a social disadvantage. He continued before I had a chance to say anything.
"They are an odd doubling are they not, the singer with his heart in his throat and the man who drove the whirlwind."
He seemed taken aback for a second. "How apt. Both in their way moved quantities of air, but in rather different ways." He laughed. "As I do too! How rude of me to prattle on without us being properly introduced, it was simply that I was pleased to see your interest in those two. Somehow I had expected... rather less." Suddenly he became far more serious. "Allow me to introduce myself, I am Imre Tradenko." he held out his hand. It was large. It was real.
My brain struggled to keep up.
I mean, I had expected rich. Given the goons, rich was a given. I had expected powerful. I was about to shake hands with a league that made rich and powerful look like the hired help. I was about to shake hands with the man who basically owned the oil fields in the Caucuses. His career was shrouded in mystery. Came from nowhere, first appeared as a minor party official in the far East of what used to be the Soviet Union, was next seen attached to the still relatively unknown Gorbachev, next appeared right after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In a few short years he had gone from being a reasonably minor crony to being filthy stinking rich and powerful. It appeared that if anyone had made money out of the ten long years of butchery in Afghanistan that had broken the back of the Soviet Union, it had been Imre Tradenko. His power, and his money had grown exponentially, every year since then and about two years ago, when Pietr Rushenko had hit a hill in the Urals in his 747, as far as mother Russia went, Imre Tradneko was "Mr Petrol." Hell. From what I had heard, that went for a good proportion of Eastern Europe as well. And China. Hell. If our beloved Prime Minister had known that this guy was in town he would even now be scratching at the door offering head jobs. Simply, Imre Tradenko made the Texan Oil barons look like pump attendants. This guy owned about half. Of everything.
What do you think I did? I shook his hand.
Vigorously.
"Mr Tradenko" I smiled, "you look younger than your photos."
He laughed merrily. "Oh, Mr Dunelands, there are no photos. No photos at all, and certainly none in the media. I am quite sure of that. But I had heard that you were a charmer and I am pleased to see that my sources have not been proven wrong." He dropped my hand. "And I am also surprised to see that you are cultured." He gestured towards bust of Harris. "You recognised both of those instantly. I am pleased to see that those years in Scots College and Oxford were not passed in an idle dream."
Point taken. He had done his research and the small talk was now over. He continued. "I had expected rather less of a real estate man in this benighted backwater."
And I had better watch my fucking step. Check. Point taken.
He seemed pleased that we were communicating. He took the lead and we passed through several equivalently luscious rooms until we found our way into the central core of the building in a windowless sparsely furnished office. Chrome steel desk, two Braques (They were real. I restrained myself.) He sat on one of two low leather couches. When he motioned at me I sat on the edge of the other one. He motioned again and instantly the blank white wall in front of us lit under the beam of a video projector. The image was somewhat grainy and dark enough to be murky, but it was quite familiar to me. It showed the couch in the living room of the Presidential suite at one of Sydney's more exclusive boutique harbourside hotels. Right in the centre of the frame, in the middle of the couch sat I. Myself. I was naked except for a Swans baseball cap. A young lady who was shortly to become royalty was sucking my penis. She was naked too. The girl was drunk and sucked industriously. I raised my face up and stared into the camera. My eyes met mine. I raised a thumb in salute and mugged drunkenly out of the screen.
This film had come out of my home safe. Other than that, the cog wheels in my brain seemed to have jammed. A soft voice issued from hidden speakers somewhere in the room. "Images were captured using a Toshiba 60326 digital video head secreted in the grill of the hotel air-conditioning duct. Camera delivered images via standard cable to a security hard drive system secreted in the ceiling cavity of the hotel unit's second bedroom." Almost instantly the scene changed. Same hotel, but now the bedroom.
I was on the bed, pounding away at the young lady in question. She was on all fours facing the camera. It looked like I was banging her ass and that she was screaming in pain or ecstasy but I could remember the way that I was her cunt and not getting enough in the way of friction to be really maintain my erection. After all, I was pretty drunk. I know I was. I was still wearing that baseball hat, but now it was on sideways, and I smiled crazily at this camera too, and made a thumbs up before I started slapping at her ass in time with my thrusts.
The voice returned. "Same model camera, same connections, to the same recording unit. Matched by cameras similarly placed in the spa area, the bathroom and the Southern end of the balcony. Fingerprints found on equipment and connections throughout the system match those of Kyyle Dunelands. Hard drive recovered from safe in bedroom of Kyyle Dunelands." There was a faint almost imperceptible click. The microphone in the hidden projection box had just been turned off. I felt that we were rather more private, but I could sense that we were being watched from many angles with cold and minute precision. The room was quiet except for the slight sound of what sounded like a quite high breeze buffeting balcony French doors somewhere outside. I remained silent.
Mr Tradenko looked at me.
"The young lady, is, of course, my daughter."
The only thing that I could think of was a Boeing 747, packed with business rivals, missing a wing and spiraling into the side of a snowy mountain in the Urals. I found myself trying to remember the final death toll of that one. Forty? Sixty? All I could remember were the "Flying Palace Carnage" headlines in the newspapers and the hammering the markets had taken over the next week or so. The 747 was a good example of the Tradenko business technique, apparently, though the Australian newspapers seemed to think that mother Russia was a long way off, even here the disappearances and torture in the "Oil business" were common knowledge.
I was numb. Even my numbness was numb.
"Of course, we do not share the same name. She is the issue of an early experience of mine. I had no..." here he looked away from me and stared vacantly at the empty white of wall that had recently been a screen. "I had no, share, in the raising of her. Her mother took her, she said, as far from me as she could. On the way of course, they passed the finest finishing schools and made sure that they made the right friends." He looked at me. "I find that I am in a quandary."
"Until a few minutes ago, the plan was exceptionally simple. I would have a short conversation with you, and then you would leave here and go home and get busy with committing suicide." His eyes had as much expression as a fishes. "Via a short experience downstairs in the parking garage with some of my men." He sighed heavily and rubbed at his face as if it was made of thick foam rubber.
"The mother. If the mother should see you, she would kill you herself. The daughter still loves you in the way that young women do. She is going to be married, and she still cries over you. She was very, very angry about that tape," he nodded at the wall, "then she asked me not to hurt you." He shook his head. A man of the world, still befuddled by the ways of women. "The mother though, the mother has changed. She left me because she could not stomach the things that I had to do to become the man I had become. She said that I was a monster." He smiled ruefully at that. "Now I find that all this fine living, and good company seems to have turned her into a monster in her turn."
"And time seems to have mellowed me, in some ways." I looked closely at him, and saw that he looked as sad as any man I have ever seen, and more tired than I could believe. For a moment his face was nothing but jowls. The face of an old pit bull, remembering the pit. For the shortest moment I saw superimposed on his both the face of Bomber Harris and underneath that, struggling to get out, the face of Paul Robeson. Suddenly, I was almost sorrier for him than I was scared of him.
"The mother wants you burned. First she wants to ... cause you great pain... and then she wants you to burn. While still alive. Make it like an accident, she says. Make it like an accident."
He shook his head, a bemused man of the world, astonished at the ways of women. "But this is not just. You have killed no-one. And my daughter too, is not entirely without moral blemish."
This was true. I mean, aside from me. He went on.
"You have been watched, most closely for the last three weeks. Everything that you have seen or done, or touched, has been watched, and recorded, and studied. If you had shown the slightest interest in spreading these images..." he waved at the empty wall, and one thick gold cufflink winked heavily at me, "... you would have been stopped. And dealt with." There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind what that meant. But it didn't really interest me that much, my tastes have never run in that direction. It was as if he was reading my thoughts.
"None of this though, smacks of blackmail, or of anything except some sort of youthful desire for a souvenir. A garter to hang from an aerial. A ..." he thought for a while. "A...keepsake." He didn't look entirely happy at the idea but the esoteric nature of the word seemed to appeal to him. "My psychologist tells me that it is likely that you would use this video as an aid to masturbation, and also as a proof to yourself that you are a man. His study of you tells him he says that the chances of you using the images as blackmail are less than three percent, and that the chances of you going public with the images are less than five percent."
"After looking at you, I agree with him. This is good. I do not like public embarrassment and I like blackmailers even less. But you have exposed me, and my family, to an unacceptable risk. According to my security people there is about a two percent chance that you may have a hidden copy of the video stream. That you may have secreted the video on a thumb drive or some such and passed it to a confederate under the noses of my security. This means that there is about a ten percent chance that you are a serious security risk after all." He was staring at me. His pupils of his eyes were like gimlets. After a few seconds both of us seemed to start breathing again. He spoke.
"I think not. You seem to me to be soft, and spoilt, but I am a good judge of character. More than that, you have a... " he paused. "You recognised the two busts in the other room. Not just the sculptor, any peruser of art might have done that, but you recognised the subjects. Then, when I entered you looked at me with interest." A frown crossed his face. "No. That is not right. Kinship?" He seemed to be trying words in his head. "English is not my first language. The word does not matter. In that look, you convinced me that you have a mind, and a spirit. These are rare things in this world."
"So. You get to live. You get to pay a fine, and you get to live. We have taken... one way and another... half of everything you own. We keep that. You get to remember that we know we can take the rest of it, should we wish to. That is your fine. However, we need insurance too. "
So here I am.
In a minute or two, Hank will run out of steam and his attention will turn back on too matters in hand, specifically, the fact that until about three quarters of and hour ago, he was hanging around outside the Matthew Talbot Hostel in Darlinghurst and now he is approaching stardom in the porno industry, or so he thinks. It appears that Imre Tradneko has a sense of humour. He is paying for ten of Sydney's most deserving homeless to get their cocks sucked and perhaps, should they wish, to dip their dicks in my virgin ass. He is also feeding them, and providing them with enough alcohol to lower their inhibitions, but not enough (regrettably) to cause brewers droop. In short, Mr Tradenko is throwing a little revenge party, and I am the main course.
My job is simple. If they want it, I do it. I get filmed doing it. I have to look like I like what I am doing, or Tradenko Enterprises goes to plan "B." As far as I am concerned, that would be a bad thing. Plan "B" you see, is me, suddenly vanishing, perhaps while on fire, perhaps not. The vanishing is non negotiable though.
It has been an odd evening. I was expecting to attend a banquet at the Royal Sydney Golf Club, in honour of the sixty - fifth birthday of an ex-premier of New South Wales. Instead, I spent the early part of the evening shaving my body as well as I could and then dressing myself in some rather cheesy and scratchy female lingerie. I think I did a pretty bad job. All up, I know I look pretty frightful. Just now I saw a patch of quite thick blackish hair on the inside of my left forearm. It was in a roughly squarish shape and reminded me of a film I saw once called "Satan's Skin" which said that those in the control of Satan have a patch of thick rough skin on them. It is the way that they are marked. Seeing it made me feel rather sick. Mind you, I already felt rather sick as the rather large half hard penis I was sucking on at the time smelt a lot like a mixture between Parmesan cheese and wet dog. And fish. The penis in question belonged to a fact and half mad man named Kevin, aside from farting a lot also smoked a great many cigarettes. Even his sperm tasted of stale tobacco smoke. I swallowed every drop, too, like I was told to. There was lots.
I am sure it will make a great video.
After half mad Kevin, there was the really angry half Aboriginal guy whose name I did not catch, who swore all the time and who tore my cheap blonde wig off and threw it away and then there was the old guy who looked like he had been carved out of blue vein cheese. He just couldn't come. He didn't seem to mind though. He just kept cackling like a mad prospector in a film. And now there is Hank, and he seems to be ready from my service. After him there seems to be only about two more before the mini bus load is dealt with, then I get to go home and get some sleep and get to remember that should a copy of that video ever get out, or even be seen by anyone else, then I get to be painfully dead, and have the movie for the world to remember me by.
It's a good incentive. I sowed the wind, and now I am reaping the whirlwind. I have learned my lesson. I guarantee it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, Hank is ready for his head job.
alice dee 19 July 2005
AfterWord This short story was somehow inspired by poem 97 of Catullus. I quote it here, in full, out of a mixture of hopeless pedantry and happy spite. alice dee
*** Gaius Valerius Catullus 84-54 BC
Poem 97
As God is my witness where is the difference between the smell of Aemilius' mouth & that of his arse? The cleanliness of one equals the filth of the other. Actually his arse is probably the cleaner and the nicer of the two: there he is without teeth, while the teeth in his mouth are half a yard long, stuck in the gums like an old wagon behind them the cleft cunt of a she-mule pissing in summer And this being copulates.
A dolt fit for the treadmill,
Considers himself an object of elegance. Whatever woman handles this man is equally capable of licking the arse-hole of a leprous hangman.
Translated Peter Whigham The Poems of Catullus penguin Books 1966
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