Chapter 16. In which the hook is baited and the line is cast

There is a rumor. It’s out there, but you have to be filthy rich just to hear it in the first place. The rumor is that for one hundred million, you can fuck a superheroine. The one that went missing. No, not the blonde; they found that one, remember? The other one.

They say she’s tucked away somewhere, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, some place like that. There’s this guy, has some kinda power over her. Like she’s still super strong and shit, but this guy can make her do whatever he says.

And he can take her powers away too. He says some kinda mumbo jumbo magic words and chains her to the floor, and then she’s as weak as a kitten. Well, weak as a normal woman, anyway. And that’s when you take her. That’s when you fuck her, beat her, abuse her, make her beg for mercy, whatever you want. All night long.

Yeah, it’s just a rumor. Helluva story anyway. Helluva stroke fantasy. Sure makes you wish you had a hundred mil to burn, doesn’t it?

In the bar at the most exclusive hotel in Dubai they saw each other. All these guys, the elite, the powerful, the billionaires, they were a community; they knew each other. The twenty-something software genius had actually been leaving when he noticed the middle-aged oil mogul and decided to stop and chat.

He seemed as if he was bursting to say something, but was trying hard to approach it coyly, obliquely.

“In town for business or pleasure, Faisal?”

“A little of both. What about you, Doug? Strange to see you without your entourage.”

“I’ve been here a couple of weeks, alone. Vacation. Sometimes the groupies just get in the way. No, a little snorkeling, a little sailing, a little hang gliding. Going back tomorrow. You?”

“My last appointment was yesterday. My Alana and I spent the day shopping.”

“I really don’t mean to be, um, insulting, but does the word ‘pussy-whipped’ mean anything to you?”

The older man laughed aloud. “No, young man. It’s her innocence, her excitement. It amuses me. When she gets bored, jaded, when she no longer wants me to take her shopping, that is when I will be done with her.”

The younger man couldn’t think of a good segue from that so he decided to broach the subject directly. “So, ah, there is this rumor about Majestic Woman. Have you heard it?”

“That she is a hundred-million-dollar-a-night whore? Yes, I’ve heard it.”

“It’s true.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. She’s right here in Dubai. I was there two weeks ago, when I first got here. The guy, her handler, her pimp, he’ll let you do anything that’s not likely to kill her.”

“You ... you don’t say.”

“Faisal, I want to show you something. It’s up in my room but I can bring it right down.”

“I’ll wait.”

A few minutes later the younger man returned with what looked like a small duffel bag. Inside, bottles of ink, some needled apparatus.

“It’s a tattooing kit. That Indian pimp of hers actually let me give her a tramp stamp while I was reaming out her ass. ‘Doug Westerberg was here’, with an arrow down to her butt crack. I’ve made an entry in her permanent record now.”

“Very creative, Doug. But her owner is Pakistani, not Indian. ‘Ibrahim Beg’, tall, large man? Definitely Pakistani. Oh, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. I sampled the lady’s pleasures just three nights ago. There is no such tattoo on her back.”

Doug was processing several shocks at once, but the loss of his handiwork was the biggie. “What? No tattoo? Are you sure?”

“Quite certain. I spent a great deal of time admiring that particular part of her ... anatomy. Nice dimples. Perfectly-formed derrière. Clean and unmarked and soft as the day she was born.”

“Damn, I spent almost a million getting an expert to teach me how to use this stuff. Shit.”

“Alas, Doug. I had my disappointment too.” With a smooth practiced motion, Faisal was suddenly holding a three-foot-long telescoping police baton. “This toy was confiscated unfortunately. At least there were some other fun toys laying around.”

“But the tattoo, how did they do it, Faisal? Tattoo removal like that should have left scarring, stitches. Hell, skin graft discoloration!”

“The man can magically remove the superpowers of one of the most powerful supers on Earth. He keeps her trapped and enthralled even when she has powers. And you want to know how he removes a tattoo?”

“You’re right. I guess I’m just disappointed. I mean the woman hasn’t aged in, what, six, seven decades, right? I thought I might be able to hitch a little ride on her immortality, y’know?”

“It was an interesting idea. I applaud you.”

“Yeah. So ... no beat-down stick for you, huh?”

“He was afraid I might accidentally kill her.”

“I heard that! Gotta protect the goose that fucks the golden pricks.”

“Such an elegant turn of phrase you have, Douglas.”

“Whatever. Hey, did you know the price was negotiable?”

“Prices are always negotiable, Doug.”

“C’mon, give. What did you pay?”

“Are we going to compare penis sizes next, Doug? sigh Very well, I paid fifty million.”

“Damn! I paid eighty mil. Shit. Still worth it though.”

“Indeed. The verification phase alone was almost worth the price.”

“Ha! For you maybe. I tried to sucker-punch her. Bruised my knuckles on her solar plexus. But she was a lot more bruised than I was when I was done for the night.”

“Ah. I used a baseball stick —”

“Stick? You mean a baseball ‘bat’?”

“Excuse me. Yes, of course, a baseball bat, that Mister Beg provided. I struck a blow against her knee. It broke in half, the bat, of course, not the leg. He offered to let me use my baton at that point, but I did not wish to damage it. I also made her fly around the room for me. The rest, of course, was only somewhat more mundane sadism, made interesting only by the identity of the subject.”

“Well, your sadism may have been ‘mundane’. Mine was pretty intense. She was bruised, battered, crying, and begging for mercy long before sunrise.”

“Look, Doug ... Alana is waiting for me. I have to go now.”

“Sure, sure. Later.”

Cindi and I were enjoying a late dinner on the other side of town. I was giving her highlights of Doug and Faisal’s conversation, more or less in real time. I was trying to play down the specifics.

Faisal had been her most recent “client”, and by far her worst in the entire four months. His “mundane sadism” was something the Marquis de Sade himself would have thought high art. And he didn’t even use that much pain. It was mostly a matter of emphasis, of timing, of some ineffable dominance that he just exuded. I had to stay in her head the whole night, talking to her, reassuring her, letting her know how much time had passed so she would know that the end of this horror was coming, however slowly. It was all I could do to keep her from folding completely under Faisal’s onslaught. Hell, it shook me, and I was only an observer.

And it certainly didn’t start or end with Cindi. Faisal’s Alana was waiting for him all right, blindfolded, gagged, and tied in a picture-perfect, but rather uncomfortable, shibari rope binding. It would appear that he had another night of “mundane sadism” ahead of him.

Just mentioning his name made Cindi shiver, but she insisted that I fill her in. She wanted to make sure things were working according to plan.

“So you’re sure he’ll tell Blake when he sees him next week?” Of course, she was talking about the boy genius now, not the middle-aged sheik.

“I don’t see how he can avoid it. He was practically blurting out ‘I fucked Majestic Woman’ as soon as he saw, um, the other guy.”

“Hell, he was so into the idea that he tried to have it permanently printed on my ass. Athena may be a monster, but I was never so glad for her shield as I was the next morning.”

“Me too, babe. Me too. Now, do you really believe Blake will play it cool, or will he turn the boy over to the cops, or worse, to the Wraith.”

“Why would Blake have to get tough with him? Westerberg will spill his guts about the whole thing, without prompting even! Blake’s biggest challenge will be getting a word in edgewise. Besides that, as far as details go, I believe he’ll want to see for himself. I believe he’ll want to see what I’ve gotten myself into, or if it’s even really me, before he does anything. Blake is a very ... hands-on person in some ways. Look, I still think we should just tell him, bring him into the cabal.”

“No.”

“But —”

“No, Cindi. I won’t. It’s dangerous enough that you know.”

“It’s dangerous to try to trick him, My Lord. Even more risky to try to control him.”

“It was dangerous to try to control you too. When did you figure out that the penthouse was in Falkirk?”

“Sometime during the first week, not long after you dropped the dream masquerade.”

“Exactly. At any point after that you could have shown up on my doorstep and tried to kill me, but you didn’t.”

“But that’s diff —”

“Look, you wanted him in the Plan; fine, he’s in the Plan. But he’s not on the planning committee.”

“My Lord ... I am your slave in this, as in all things...”

I groaned. “Cindi —”

“But I think you should at least be ready to tell him the truth if you have to. At least think about what you would say.”

“Fine. I’ll think about it.”

We were both a bit irritable. We hadn’t been getting enough sleep. That probably deserves some explanation. Greg and Annette were still doing our sleeping for us, but now they were in sync again. They were together in Dubai as Ibrahim and Majestic Woman while Cindi and I used their bodies in Australia. Then they were together in Australia in their own bodies when Cindi and I were in Dubai.

Of course, in both sets of bodies, they were supposed to be doing our sleeping for us. Unfortunately, they’d been spending a fair amount of that sleep time, in both sets of bodies, “getting reacquainted”, by which I mean “fucking like weasels”.

Cindi, “my slave in all things”, thought it was cute and romantic. She didn’t want me to admonish them. So I hadn’t ... yet. Needless to say, we were all a bit cranky.

Cindi was looking at me strangely and nervously. Maybe I was more than “a bit” cranky. And maybe it was from more than just lack of sleep. Watching the woman I loved — how strange it felt to formulate that thought after twelve thousand years — watching her have her skin cut and flayed, her body battered and bruised, her bones broken, a couple of times a month, it was taking its toll ... on me.

It didn’t matter that she would heal as soon as she were unchained. I couldn’t un-see it. I couldn’t un-feel the way I felt when some bastard with more money than morals was beating the shit out of her.

It didn’t matter that she had had more than two millennia of tough, physical, painful, dangerous front-line military experience before she had become a demigoddess. Actually, I was sure that was a great help to her, but it didn’t help me much.

But Cindi was giving me that “My Lord is displeased and I don’t know why” look, which meant that she would be on pins and needles for the rest of the night. We’d be in Falkirk in about four hours and that would be when we would deal with it.

I knew what my problem was, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. My problem was that I couldn’t stand to see her taking this abuse. She could stand it, but I couldn’t. Even Faisal’s “mundane sadism” was fading from her thoughts much quicker than it was from mine. My problem was that I just needed to man up, put on my big boy pants, and execute my part of the Plan half as well as Cindi was executing hers.

I’d have to tell Cindi something when we got to Falkirk. By then I’d have something figured out. Maybe she would demand that I punish her. She had been doing that more frequently lately. I have to admit that it helped some, sick bastard that I am. Somehow it helped her too. Maybe we were both sick. Maybe being the ultimate BDSM pimp-prostitute pair was changing us, and not in a good way. Thank goodness we only averaged one client every two or three weeks. I could barely stand that.

Greg and Annette were actually getting some sleep tonight. In Falkirk they’d already managed six hours of shut-eye. That was already more than their average total sleep time per day per body over the past few months. Rats. Annette was waking up to, um, answer the call of nature. She was already thinking about waking Greg “the best way” when she came back to bed.

No. Not tonight.

«“Annette, don’t do it. Do you want to see what the inside of my dungeon looks like? I’ve done some remodeling, you know?”»

«N-no, Master, please —»

«“Maybe you’d like to start sleeping in the doggie bed again?”»

«Please don’t, Master. Please —»

«“Leave Greg alone and go back to sleep!”»

That little conversation actually made her a bit more wet, but still she obeyed me. When she came back to bed she snuggled back into spooning with Greg. Unconsciously he put an arm around her. She held his hand to her breast but didn’t try for more. Soon she fell back asleep. Good. Maybe Cindi and I would both have our wits about us when we had our talk later.

After Doug Westerberg gushed about his Dubai experience to Blake Warren it only took two days for Blake’s intermediaries to contact my impossible-to-crack transaction network. It only took one more day to negotiate a price, a date, and a set of ground rules. It was all pretty standard as these things go. But Cindi and I were both so excited we could barely contain ourselves.

In less than two weeks Blake would be standing in front of us as a “client”, trying to figure out what nefarious fate befell his friend Cynthia and how he might possibly save her.

Fast forward those twelve days. “Tonight,” as Rod Stewart might say, “was the night.” But I must say that Cindi and I were far from certain that everything was going to be alright. There would be a great deal of very serious playacting this evening, by all three of us. Blake had to put on a convincing front as a thrill-seeking playboy billionaire who barely knew Majestic Woman and was willing to be at least as amateurishly sadistic toward her as Doug Westerberg had been. At the same time, he would be trying to gather as much covert surveillance as he could get away with.

Cindi had a much more subtle role to play. She had to convince Blake that she was utterly and unshakably enthralled to “Ibrahim Beg” (me). At the same time, she had to find a subtle way to convince Blake that there might be some looseness in those mental chains, some slim hook of a hope upon which he might hang his dreams of rescuing her. I had looked into Blake’s mind a great deal over the past two weeks. Cindi and I had “improvved” various of scenarios over and over again, based on his plans. She was as ready as she could be.

My role was the most complicated of all. To Blake I had to play the Slavemaster-pimp. I had to be the master-of-ceremonies, the gatekeeper, the showman, the enemy who didn’t know he was the enemy. To Cindi I had to be like the undercover cop’s handler. I had to be the voice in her mind that kept her informed about what was going on in Blake’s head, about what she would need to do or not do. But I was also in the room, so I had to keep Blake off-balance, uncomfortable. I couldn’t give him any time to think. I couldn’t allow him to analyze the situation and probe for holes.

Beyond all that I had to remain above it all. There were schemes within schemes within schemes here. Subterfuge, overlaid with meta-subterfuge, overlaid with meta-meta-subterfuge, and I was the only observer with the perspective to keep track of what was really going on. I definitely had my work cut out for me.

Late in the afternoon, Blake met my four big uglies in the lobby of his hotel. “Ibrahim Beg” had told both Blake and his escorts that the escorts were wired for sound, but the bug-sweeper in Blake’s watch found nothing. So he risked trying to chat up the muscle, but they were both stone-faced and closed-mouthed. They believed they were wired, whether Blake believed it or not. Blake was not surprised by the black SUV with the dark tinted windows. Perhaps he had been hoping for something a bit more original. The black velvet bag that they tied over his head was not much of a surprise either, although the plastic tube circulating fresh, cool air under the hood was a nice touch. Sixty million bucks did buy some creature comforts apparently.

Of course, this would have been the perfect set up for a kidnapping. Well, except that even goons have families, and, by arrangement, Blake’s people were keeping a watchful eye on those families until Blake was safe in his room tomorrow morning.

He was not surprised that they took a winding path through Dubai. He was only mildly surprised that they managed to disorient him enough that he became lost. The ticking pattern of the watch against his skin told him that the SUV was blocking his backup locators: GPS, eLORAN, TACAN, and local Wi-Fi signals. Blake hadn’t even attempted to bring his LoH communicator. There would not have been any easy way to hide it, even with the Wraith’s holographics, and no way to make it look like anything other than a very high-tech device either. The cursory search they had given him upon boarding the SUV would have turned it up in any case. But that was okay, he still had some tricks up his sleeve.

They arrived in an enclosed garage and the goons escorted his hooded form to the elevator, down, then up, then down, then ... Well, you get the picture. After about a half hour the elevator stopped, they took him through three different heavy doors separated by winding hallways. After they went through the last door they removed his hood.

He was in the “game room” with Majestic Woman and “Ibrahim Beg”. I was standing in front of Blake but off to the side so that he had an unobstructed view. The game room was thirty-by-thirty meters with a high ceiling and no windows. Scattered around the room were all sorts of BDSM toys, dildos, gags, restraints, clamps, flails, canes, whips, ropes, straps. The walls were host to various rings, hooks and other access points. Against the far wall was an over-the-top, luxurious, much-larger-than-king-size bed. The bed was also decorated with a variety of posts, rings, hooks, bars, and the like.

In the middle of the room, in full uniform, Majestic Woman was kneeling, ass touching heels, knees spread, hands upturned and resting on mid-thigh, chest outthrust, head humbly bowed, eyes averted to the floor. At the sight of her Blake’s heart skipped a beat, but he managed to remain outwardly calm.

In Beg’s lightly-accented English, I began. I always felt like some sort of Bond villain at this stage of the proceedings. I had learned to embrace it and ham it up.

“Welcome, Mister Warren. Would you like a beverage?” I gestured with my gun toward the bar. On hearing “Mister Warren”, Majestic Woman gasped and glanced up to meet Blake’s gaze, then flinched and lowered her eyes again.

“Ah, it appears she knows you. That has only happened once before. This may be a most ... interesting night. Your drink, Mister Warren?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” he replied, striding toward his fallen friend.

I hustled to keep up. “So, bitch, exactly how do you know Blake Warren?”

«This is it. If she has no resistance left, I’m a dead man.», thinks Blake.

She flinched again as if struck. She looked conflicted. “Master ... we ... we met at a charity fundraiser ... in Carthage City ... five ... six ... years ago.”

“Is that all, Majesticunt?”

She shifted nervously.

«Shit, shit, shit.»

“I have seen him at many Legion of Heroes ... events. He is ... a very generous ... benefactor.”

I rounded on Blake now, gun barrel leveled at his head. “Is there a reason that I should trust a friend of the LoH, when I have turned their favorite poster-girl into a whore?”

Cindi flinched again. It was just the right subtle move, like she was trying to resist but couldn’t. She could win an Oscar for this performance.

Blake eyed me levelly and made a show of “trying” to keep his cool. “Look, buddy, I’m a businessman. Publicly, I’m the friend of everything that’s good and wholesome, the LoH included. It’s good PR. But privately ... hell, even not so privately ... do I need to pull out fifteen years of scandal rags that have caught me in various states of undress with some of the hottest cootch in America? In the world? Hey, Majestic Tits, tell your master what I said to you at the last fundraiser you ran as chair.”

Cindi whined, as if terrified, “W-w-what you s-s-s-said?”

“Yeah, you know, about ‘being generous’.”

A pained look crossed her face. This was really risky, but if it worked, Blake was in. “He said that ... if ... if I gave him a ‘good reason’, he could be ‘much more generous’, and then ... then he goosed me.”

Blake had actually played out that scene in front of several reporters, including one who was sniffing uncomfortably close to the Wraith’s secret identity. Blake had paid exorbitant bribes to keep the incident out of the papers too. But it succeeded in killing speculation about Blake and the Wraith.

“Very well. I believe you, Mister Warren.” I lowered the gun. “In point of fact, your reputation precedes you. I must admit that I find your hypocrisy ... refreshing.”

Now that the crisis was over, Blake noticed how everything Cindi had said was the truth, just not the whole truth by several orders of magnitude. «Whatever is going on here, she still has some fight down in there somewhere. She didn’t give me up.»

“Well, Mister Warren. Perhaps you would like to verify her bona fides, hmm? Some of my clients have enjoyed that part of the proceedings even more than ... what comes after.”

“You’ve had fag clients who would rather waste time beating a brick wall than fucking a hot bitch? It takes all kinds I guess. No, I’m sure it’s her.” He reached down under her chin and lifted it up, but only because she cooperated in the lifting. Looking her in the eyes, he added, “It’s clearly her, but I must admit she looks different with fear in her eyes. Better. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you tame this insufferable bitch?”