Missed Clues
Chapter 10

Copyright© 2014 by autofocus

Romantic Sex Story: Chapter 10 - Spouse splitting for parts unknown. Thrilling adventures on the Adriatic, planned by a travel agent provacateur. International relations and indelicate diplomacy. You always get what you pay for, but pay dearly when plans go awry. Pay attention to the clues in front of your eyes. Who's really in charge? Does it matter? Clever, charming, conspiratorial choices certainly carry considerably captivating consequences. It's all good in the end. Eventually, in the end. It's a long hot summer.

Caution: This Romantic Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/ft   ft/ft   Consensual   Humor   Sister   Father   Daughter   Spanking   Light Bond   Group Sex   Harem   First   Oral Sex   Anal Sex   Exhibitionism   Voyeurism   Public Sex   Nudism  

The girls played the whack-a-mole game for hours, making connections all over the continent and sending them ‘upstairs’ for further study. Gina and I took a break to make a late buffet spread of cold cuts, potato salad and drinks.

I got a call from Ortega. “I am conferencing in our new NSA liaison, Special Agent at Large, Harlan Ripley. He wants to listen in for a while and catch up. Ted, your team is sending some significant intel. Do we need to apologize to Donovan? There is no way you guys are ‘intuiting’ this.”

“OK by me. No webpages, social media or intercepted text messages were used, Allen. You’re in the clear. We are thirty-two unbiased minds filtering through the scraps. Call it the ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die: Princess Bride’ algorithm.”

Ripley’s chuckle demonstrated his understanding.

“First the crime dramas and now the movies?” Ortega replied. “I’m an Embassy office grunt. Make it simple. Advise me.”

“We’re mining existing but not related information sources. Read an obituary and get a listing of next of kin, parents, pallbearers and motivations for revenge. ‘Mr. W. Bozo, the son of X and Y Bozo, who were lost to a drone strike in Montenegro.’ Surviving offspring and siblings become persons of interest. With whom do they associate? Track personal property distribution through public records. That leads to general property titles and public tax rolls. How do our suspects generate income?” I laughed. “My tech department is working through a spreadsheet/graphing system I designed. We fill in the blanks we know about and make it searchable. Countries of origin, associates, suspected crimes, last address, face recognition hits, last seen, organizations, assets, families, experience. Google™ for specific bad guys. Excel™ for cellmates. It recollates and updates with each new entry.”

“You are looking for second and third tier links. That’s how you found the doctor who has a thing for reassigning identities. We start with the list of the ‘homeless’ who disappeared only to reappear hundreds of miles away with a nice car. If two separate threads have a common connection, be it a cellmate, cousin or former co-worker, we need to run a deep background on him or her.” Ortega chuckled. “You don’t have the combined intelligence resources, but they haven’t burrowed as deep into incidental friends and extended family.”

“Bingo. We can’t probe everyone, just those with the potential to be part of this tangle. We’ll still send you the individual results as we go along with the keywords assigned.” I promised, “Send us more names, we can follow tangential strands and develop more keywords. The worst that can happen is you keep the Criminal Investigations Division at Interpol busy. The best is that you learn who to shadow and how they promulgate plans. The common unlikely acquaintance as the go-between: Chemist ‘A’ works with file clerk ‘B’ who lives next door to café server ‘C’ who dates truck driver ‘D’.”

“We may have the known associates, A/B and C/D, but B/C might be the pipeline and easy to overlook. Another B/E and C/F to E/F third tier link would be nearly invisible.” Allen sighed. “No wonder field work takes so long.”

“Considering the variety of coordinated threats faced so far, we have to assume an extensive network able to merge and synchronize street gangs, disaffected scientists, gun and drug smugglers, ex-military, mercenaries, human traffickers and who knows who else.” I noted, “We, on the other hand, have destroyed a major operations center by paying attention to little clues.”

“We bought a lot of time, thinned the labor pool and cost the money people dearly.” Ortega chuckled. “That can’t be bad.”

“Perhaps best of all, they have no idea how we knew to hit the bomb factory so hard. We had five extremely motivated commando teams already in place to strike. They have to think we were on to them from the beginning and planned the raid exactly when they were most exposed. The leaders are going to be searching for leaks, not knowing that we extrapolated from disassociated data at the last instant.”

Ripley asked, “How much of the success can attributed to sheer luck?”

“Not luck but luck management. It was their bad choice of victims that gave us the map. It was our ability to read and react to a rapidly changing environment that carried the day. It was not luck to search for stolen vehicles. It was not luck that we questioned the collections of captured conspirators.” I smiled to himself. “Then tradecraft. It was constant re-evaluation, information assimilation and rational analysis of the facts, not luck, that brought about their defeat. Now, it is no intellectual reach to think they are in disarray, likely a bit paranoid. The resulting frustrated over reactions will breed haste and carelessness. Discontent breeds distrust, which destroys the command hierarchy.”

“The leaders must be feeling cursed and bedeviled by wizards. Every subplot and diversion has been anticipated, uncovered and, if not avoided altogether, effectively countered at great loss. Yet they actually made very few mistakes.” Harlan commented. “Now they’ll examine, purge, regroup and reorganize, always looking for phantoms. With the deeper probes, we can watch and disrupt as they attempt to rebuild the network.”

“We need more phantoms to apply pressure immediately. Use the local police to apprehend those suspects already wanted for other criminal activity. Limit the options. Send photos of ‘Europe’s Most Wanted’ to TV outlets and newspapers as a public safety initiative of the national police. Begin rigorous ‘routine’ inspections of imports from suspect nations. Reactivate retired ‘cold warriors’ who know the old school methods. They have a lot of experience to contribute.” I encouraged, “I’m not a spy or gamer, but I understand game theory. The goals become clearer once we can see the field of play and observe their moves. We have to change the rules if not the game. Do not accept restrictions. Move the pawns like queens. Give the rooks an extra move after a kill.”

“Use our assets in new ways and don’t stop to rest on our laurels. Correct?” Ripley laughed. “In effect, cheat.”

“Laurels wilt quickly. War has victors, not cheaters, Agent Ripley, you win or you die ... There is no honor in being dead. They pull a knife, we pull an RPG. As long as we control the game, we win.” I laughed back. “Imagine an apparently homeless man in a charity shelter with a mastery of krav maga and a couple of flash bangs. His identity will be hard to steal. Theirs will be hard to hide. Keep them on their heels, playing defence. Remember: They don’t know what we know.”

Gina chuckled. “Better yet, they don’t know how much we don’t know. Every plan they have is suspect. Starting everything from scratch leaves the bad guys more exposed. Sucks to be them.”

I sighed. “It does suck, but the fanatics are not the type to give up. The most we can do is cull the herd and reduce the recruitment pool.”

“You cannot do it all.” Ripley spoke again. “Keep up the good work. A lot of people are out of circulation because of your efforts. We cannot ask for more.”

“Your trouble is that you get everyone else out of trouble. You recognize it first and can’t dodge fast enough.” Ortega really laughed. “Then you get the big guys involved and find bigger trouble.”

“We’ll keep the spies active all afternoon, bur we all need to power down for a few hours and enjoy our vacation.” Laurie complained. “It’s my birthday party these bozos are crashing and I don’t appreciate it one bit.”

“The teens have spoken. Smart commandoes listen. And on that note, we are signing off for the evening. Mental housekeeping. Call us if all hell breaks loose.” I advised, “We will do the same. Otherwise, we are outta here until morning.”

After Ripley and Ortega signed off, we settled in for the evening. The mood was subdued. Not really somber, but low key. It had been a good day as that sort of day went. People were hurt, bad guys died. Our side won. We were still not safe. No one was as long as unreasonable attitudes existed. The ones with power, East or West, at some point were responsible for getting the public stirred up. All that did was transfer the struggle to the streets from the boardroom.

Power no longer equaled impunity. Now the rabble could read and buy guns. Someone was always eager to keep the rabble roused.

My scenery improved as the girls showered and the dress code relaxed or was abandoned completely. So did the mood.

The Gamboas heated some leftover casseroles from Monica’s, toasted garlic bread and made tea. Millie and her daughters made coldcuts or soup. Dinner was as light or heavy as the individual wished. Mostly folks munched and talked, with an eye or ten on the monitors. Every few minutes, a message would come in, a database would get updated and new connections would get sent to the coordinators. That petrol station in Sarajevo only accepted cash sales. No digital trace of the customer base. Who knew our car-bomb makers bought their diesel fuel there? The cab driver in Berlin, that’s who. His sister rented to the vacationing sniper from Bonn who died at Rex Oceanus. Bozo had a note in his pocket and a map.

No matter how hard he looked on the web, Donovan would have missed the connection because there were no credit card receipts. The Peter Principle at work.

I asked for a group meeting. Once the company was assembled, I began the explanation.

“This is important, ladies. We have kicked a major hornets’ nest. The opposition knows us by association so far. Assume the following:

“They hate Gamboas for any number of reasons. From now on the sisters and cousins will always be targets. Gina, Marta, Carla, Isabella, Juliet and Jessica will have to look over their shoulders for a long time.

“The Smythes advise OPEC. Anne, Pamela, Millie and Edward are in danger. Hurting them hurts England.

“My family members, natural and adopted, are at risk. The bad guys are pissed at NASA and NSA because of the spy fiasco. We are an annoyance because their plans to make an example of us have failed at every turn, the worst target of opportunity ever that should have been the easiest. Laurie, Lilly, Teri, and all eight of the pool girls, Sadie, Jane, Tara, Dara, Petra, Melanie, Lindy and Cindy, are exposed more than usual.

“The basketballers are associated with various NATO commandoes. Bea, Marli, Erika, Suzan, Patty and Sylvia might be revealed as conspirators if there are any leaks in the NATO structure. They could be as easily be overlooked.

“The 4H girls, Angie, Maxi and Shirley are in the sights if any word of their involvement with the two accident victims got out.

“Charity and Stephie are wild cards whose identities may or may not be known. Stephie may have been tracked through Massimo’s or his guards. We do not know who else was at the Piazza of Pain.”

I hesitated, amazed that I could recite all thirty-one without a cheat-sheet. “Counting me, that is thirty-two folks to hide, forget or protect. The question becomes, ‘How do we want to live?’ Consider your answers carefully.”

“Strength in numbers. We should stick together.” Teri shouted. “Makes the job of covering our sixes simpler. As long as we don’t attract more attention than we have accidentally, we should be OK.”

“That’s true. We have been a target to bother others or a tool to draw them out. The terrorists do not know how deeply entrenched we are.” Pamela figured. “Other than our relatives, we have not been involved in an open attack.”

“There is that business at Agora Pescadora, but no surviving witnesses that we know of.” Anne countered. “I’m pretty confident the people in the restaurant are too tight knit to rat us out.”

“But we can’t stay here forever. In September, we have to go back to the Cape.” Dara whimpered. “I think Mom and Dad will have us live at Laurie’s and pick up our expenses. They made their wish for an empty nest clear. But we are really exposed to outside danger.”

“Do we hide? And where?” Tara asked. “There are nearly a dozen Cape Kids who will live at the Charles Cape Compound when and if we get home. Charity and Stephie would be better off there, too.”

“All the adopted girls are part of the family now.” I insisted. “You live at my house unless a judge rules otherwise.”

“Is there room?” Charity wanted to know.

“Sure. I had huge sleepovers all the time. A dozen girls can get lost in our home.” Laurie offered.

“I can and will build onto the house. Don’t worry about that.” I assured them all. “We can make your new home safer than ever. Plus, we have all of the military stationed around Cape Canaveral, the Naval Training Center in Orlando and Patrick Air Force Base.”

“What about Patricia, Sylvia and the Kansas Contingent? They are pretty far from any established protection.” Dara wondered. “Can we move them all to Florida? They can finish school and go to college there.”

“I can finish adopting Charity. Just need to get papers signed here and find a good family lawyer in Nashville. Cannot imagine her mother will bitch much. The paperwork basically gives her to me. Stephanie will be old enough soon to decide for herself. The folks in Midland won’t have a say.” I added. “I don’t know how much trouble Angie, Shirley and Maxine will have keeping under the radar in Kansas. They are welcome to live with us at the Cape whatever happens.”

“We can skip a grade and enroll at any Florida University with an Agriculture or Tech Specialty.” Maxi giggled. “We are, after all, award-winning, world renown agriculturists at the ripe old age of sixteen. Ask anyone.”

 
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