Chapter 2: First Steps and New Challenges

I called the number on the card as soon as I got to my apartment. The call picked up on the second ring. A voice that I didn’t recognize said, “I’m glad you called Helen.”

I said, “I’ve considered your offer and I am ready to talk.” The voice on the phone said, “Let’s meet for lunch at the Oxford-Cambridge club; is 1:00 too soon?”

That told me a couple of things. First the Oxford-Cambridge Club is one of the older traditional “gentlemen’s” clubs so the “business” was going to be serious.

My second thought was less charitable, “It’s a good thing it wasn’t Boodles or they would have made me enter through the back door, being that I am a woman and all.

I said, “I will be at the club entrance at 1:00 sharp. It was only 10:30 so I had a little time. I selected another one of my bespoke suits, this one in a darker shade of blue wool/silk blend with the classic pinstriping. I had a luxurious bath and did some serious makeup for a change. I normally wear little or no war paint. But I wanted to convey a sense of cosmopolitan and sophisticated and frankly a beautiful woman who looks her best has an advantage over any male in a social situation.

I have let my hair grow out longer than my mother’s. She is a preppie for life, but I like mine a little past my shoulders. We both have a full thick head of hair and short of employing a stylist to manage it I like to keep it twisted up on top of my head for formal occasions so that all of my neck is showing.

I selected a set of patent leather heels with a three-inch rise and my usual silk shirt with the big jaunty bow. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a very well put together young woman ready to conquer the world. That did a good job of concealing the nervous little girl who was hiding underneath. I was concerned that I would not be interested in their offer and this would be a waste of my time. But I was almost MORE concerned that I wouldn’t fit their requirements.

I know I that I have the courage and intelligence to stand up to any challenge. But I don’t know if I have the right kind of devious mind to ferret out wrong-doing and general all-around skullduggery, which is what most of this kind of security work is all about. Unfortunately, I am as straightforward, as my mother. My mother must be the most honest person I know. And I don’t think it dawns on her that people will lie, cheat, and backstab for the sheer joy of doing it.

I am a lot like my mom in that respect. We have both been brought up in a world of privilege where we did not have to resort to low-down cheating and conniving in order to get by and prosper. But I understand, as she does too, that the world doesn’t operate like that and although we know in the abstract that lots of evil and evil-doers exist, we have very little direct experience with the ins-and-outs of how they act. That is a handicap.

The closest I probably came to being injured by somebody who lacked a moral compass was My mother’s friend Emma, who nearly got me raped at a party in Rome. That happened while we were cruising the Mediterranean right after I finally met my daddy. At the time, I couldn’t believe that somebody, particularly a woman from my social class, would be so weak, devious, and downright slutty. Now I see that it was a case of her being who she was.

Somewhere in her genetic structure or past experiences that little voice that says, “This is just plain wrong” never got installed. And so, she would do things that anybody with respect for other people and their feelings would simply not do. I find that kind of person morally repugnant and so it is hard for me to put myself in their shoes. But I knew I was going to have to learn how to do that if I was going to be able to meet the kinds of challenge this work entails.

I took a cab from my apartment down to Pall Mall. The Club itself is really obvious since the flags of the Oxbridge schools hang on the front of the building. Because the members of that club are relatively enlightened, they actually allowed me, a woman, to enter through the front door.

My contact was waiting for me at reception. I knew it was him because he was the guy at the first meeting; the one who did most of the talking. We did the formal introductions and handshake thing and he escorted me into the “coffee” room, which is a definitely a misnomer if you associate “coffee” with Starbucks.

The London clubs might be hoary anachronisms, particularly for my generation. But a lot of business amongst the wealthy and privileged gets done around the mahogany tables arrayed around those Persian carpeted, marble fireplace and crystal chandeliered “coffee” rooms. My club host did very little talking until the two of us sat down. At that point, he introduced himself.

Sir Alexander Haig was a direct linear descendent from the Douglas Haig who had wasted most of an English generation in the trenches of World War I. He had gone the Cambridge and then Sandhurst route into the Guards, which gave him the credentials. And he was so clearly ex-MI-6 that he might as well have had “spook” tattooed on his forehead.

I was probably wealthier than him, with a couple of his friends added in for good measure. But I am an American citizen, a 25-year-old girl and my background is in hardball engineering, which lacks the old school elegance of the “Gentleman Cadet.”

He was a decent old chap nevertheless, almost jovial. We talked a little about Cambridge, which he had attended in the early 1960s. He told me a little bit about his service with the Blues and Royals in the Falklands. We studiously did NOT talk about any of his other experiences after that.

I told him about my life growing up, the loss of my dad before I was born and then finding him again. I also described my adventures with my parents in practically every major city in the Mediterranean the summer after we were reunited.

He asked me about my work in mathematical analysis of threat vectors, which successfully predicted cyber-attacks before they were launched. I also told him about my experiences playing on the U.S. National women’s development team when I was a teenager. The light conversation petered out shortly after that which was the universal sign that it was time to get down to business.

We had already filled out the personal slips with our orders, mine from the menu that DIDN’T have the prices on it. He looked at me out of his watery blue eyes and I could see that there was still a very dangerous predator lurking underneath the hail-fellow-well met, old school tie buffer he was portraying. I have some of my mother’s ability to put on “characters” for situations and her knack for voice mimicry as well and I respected his ability to sell me on something he absolutely wasn’t.

He said, “So do you have a decision for me Miss Larson?” I said, “I do, and it is positive as long as three conditions are met.” I outlined the first two and he actually looked at me approvingly. The third, Mel’s inclusion as my side-kick, caught him completely by surprise.

He said with concern written on his every word, “We haven’t investigated her, and we have no idea whether she can add value to the mission. We do not encourage distractions.”

I said, “You DO know that I have no interest in being paid, right?”

He said, “I can understand that given your current level of wealth,” which he probably knew to the penny.

I said, “So Melissa Brown would be a no-cost adjunct.” I went on to add that I thought that she would also provide a modicum of cover for me in any assignment. Young girls travel in groups to provide mutual support and protection. Two young girls showing up in a strange city would look normal. If I showed up in a strange city by myself THAT would look suspicious.”

He paused and seemed to consider what I had said. I added, “I am doing this partly to help Melissa get started in life. But my selfish reason is that I could use the support. She has a brilliant legal mind, and she is a solicitor rather than a barrister so she can do all of the legal work that I am barred from doing. Plus, she is specifically trained in legal research and I am not.”

He said musingly, “So what scenario are you proposing.”

I said, “We work as a team. Whatever you WERE considering paying me you pay her instead. We go into the assignment together, like two girls traveling to a new place. Melissa acts like she is trying to find work and I start the assignment. Melissa provides all of the research and investigative support that I would need in the performance of my tasks. That would give you a spearhead person and a supporting role and that would make the overall execution of the assignment that much more effective.”

He said, “That makes a good deal of sense. But of course, the key factor is whether we can clear Miss Brown to our level of absolute satisfaction.”

I said, “I am perfectly happy to wait until you do that.”

He said, “No, we need you right away.”

I said, “Then let me do the assignment and bring Melissa with me as a friend, not an active participant. You will be able to see her in action and judge her that way, while you are doing the necessary clearances at home.”

He thought for a minute and then he said, “This is highly irregular, but you also make a lot of sense. We have never used young female operatives for these kinds of assignments before and the legend of you two appearing to be a couple of girls adventuring away from home for the first time is solid cover.”

I knew that when he was using the term “legend,” he was talking about the backstory that every covert operative constructs for themselves and that told me he had “gotten it.” I had also noticed that as the conversation progressed the terminology and even the general flavor of the discussion had changed from “everyday lunch” to “military briefing.”

He said, “This first assignment is more like a training exercise and so I think I can approve your unorthodox approach to this mission. But it will only be for this mission until we get her cleared.”

I said, “She is a simple girl. It will not take long.” He said, “As you have probably guessed I am to be your “supervisor” on this mission. I said, “It’s okay, you can call yourself my handler.”

He smiled and started fishing around in one of those ancient leather briefcases. It was the battered kind that every one of my older professors at Imperial seemed to be eternally attached to. He finally found what he was looking for and took out a package. He handed it to me and said, “Here is the mission brief. Read it and then let’s do lunch here on the day after tomorrow.”

I looked and the flap was actually sealed with wax, with a heraldic imprint that must have been his signet ring. I smiled at the quaint reminder of who I was dealing with and said, “Certainly” and rose to leave. He rose, like the gentleman that he was, and we shook hands like two business professionals after a satisfactory lunch. I could not wait to get home before I tore the thing open.

Helen Larson came into the club like the poised young woman that she was. Many young people are intimidated by the upper-crust atmosphere of a London Club, women in particular. But this girl was confident and boldly chipper. The old man smiled at one more proof of her stout spirit.

Even dressed in a woman’s club suit she was a vision of loveliness. As an old hand in the great game the old man knew that a woman of her stunning beauty can be an asset in handling men. But at the same time there was no way she could be used in any surreptitious setting. She was just too strikingly beautiful for that. She didn’t bother to check in at reception. She simply came up to him and introduced herself.

Knowing immediately who to contact was another point in her favor since he had behaved more like an examiner during the initial meeting. He studied her. She was slightly above average height for a woman, perhaps five foot seven and she radiated the world class athleticism he knew she possessed. He knew she was an American, but she had been in London for seven years, so she came across more British, than Yank.

Her accent was pure “academic,” with the plummy vowels and the dropped “r’s” she sounded like a young Emma Thompson. And she definitely knew how to navigate around a Men’s Club, which was a surprise until he recalled that her father was a member at the Reform Club, and she must have spent time there. They turned to the business at hand after filling out the order slips for lunch. He was surprised that she knew enough to sign her name to hers since that was a tradition mainly in just his Club.

He laid out the offer again and she responded with three conditions. Two of those only served to underline her admirable independence and self-confidence. The third was a surprise. He knew about Melissa Brown of course. She had been prominently backgrounded during their investigation into Miss Larson. And to tell the truth she might be considered even squeakier clean than Miss Larson was, since Miss Brown had led an absolutely unremarkable life.

Melissa Brown was the daughter of a Cockney entrepreneur and his South Indian wife. She had worked in her father’s shops since she was four and she had done exceptionally well in her A-levels and in the Legal Practice Course. She had a much more extensive sex life than her friend, But the investigators believed that that was mainly due to the fact that Miss Brown was a product of Stepney, where sex seemed to be something of a sport among the younger people.

So, the old man knew that there were no red flags as far as Miss Larson’s general proposal was concerned. But he held back blanket approval as a source of potential leverage on her in the future. That was just standard practice for his former occupation. And it is important to have as many leverage points as possible on people you want to maneuver. He particularly liked the fact that Miss Larson thought in such broad tactical terms. Her suggestion about how to insert her into situations using her friend as cover was just plain brilliant.

Normally the Organization would not consider using two operatives on the same mission but since he was aware that Miss Larson had more money than she could ever spend, he understood why salary was not an issue. He was thinking ironically to himself that the British had managed to rule the world for almost a century using only one half of its population. That is, the male half. He couldn’t imagine how successful they might have been if they had also employed women like Miss Larson.

Being a traditional English gentleman, he had no idea how young women thought, or operated. And he frankly wouldn’t have cared. However, the Organization had chosen to bring one of them into the inner circle, so he realized that he needed to learn. Nevertheless, if he was to be Miss Larson’s handler, he felt he had to take her advice into consideration and her point about girls not traveling as lone-wolves was an important insight that he had never considered. He was going to pass that nugget up the line to Control for entry into their general protocols for such operations.

He handed her a packet with the operational briefing in it. He didn’t really need to do that since her movements would be closely controlled. But he wanted to see whether she could absorb the information in the packet and more importantly whether she could elaborate on it. She rose and they shook hands. As she departed, he could not help but notice her splendid round buns as they twitched their way out the door on those amazing legs. He thought to himself, “I might be in my mid-80s but I’m not dead yet.”

All-in-all the meeting had gone much better than planned and he was looking forward to the how the first assignment would turn out.

I sat down among the servers and the blinking workstations in my “war room.” I occasionally do a little recreational hacking and I need the computing power that I have installed in there. It pulls an inordinate amount of power off of the local grid. But the authorities have not complained so far.

I read the briefing cover to cover. It was late afternoon by the time I had finished. I made my way over to the bar and poured myself a helpful two fingers of Blue. The little lady in my head who I suspect is my mother commented rather snarkily, “All you are going to have to do is start smoking Cohibas and the transformation into your father will be complete.” I had to think.

My assignment was perfectly straightforward. GM-Holden which is based in Melbourne had a leak in their design department. They had discovered it by sheer chance. A snippet of one of their proprietary automotive designs was posted on a Chinese website. If the whole design had been stolen it would threaten a project that they had invested hundreds of millions in. And it might affect the very existence of that branch of the Company. By a process of elimination, the mangers at Holden knew who had leaked the snippet, but they did NOT know how MUCH had been taken, or even HOW it had been stolen.

They knew that if they acted against the person who they suspected had done it, they would never find out how the theft was carried out. But more importantly they would not know whether they needed to scrub the whole project because it was blown to the Chinese. So, what they needed was somebody to surreptitiously investigate in order to give them the take the information they needed to take the next step. That was where I came in.

The guilty party was a young woman engineer who had worked for the Company for a little over two years. She had done brilliant work and was on the fast track up the Company ladder. But she was single, and she had social activities that were suspicious at best. So, the company needed me to get close to the woman and perhaps even the people who she socialized with and then advise them about what they had to do in order to redeem the project. I was an obvious choice to do that because of my engineering credentials and my age and sex.

The assignment would start in a week. So, I needed to act fast if I planned on taking Mel with me. I called Mel’s cell and got no answer. So, I left a message. While I waited for Mel to call back, I did a little research on my own. The flight to Melbourne was going to take almost a day. I could easily handle 24 hours on an airplane. I just didn’t want to do it sitting like a sardine in a metal tube in coach.

I knew we had to arrive in steerage because my backstory was “fresh out of college.” And a young woman fresh out of college does not travel in private jets. But I was still planning a way to minimize the time that I had to travel like a new engineering hire. So, I plotted out a course that would be a little easier on my admittedly very delectable backside.

So, I reserved a NetJets flight from London to Istanbul. I was interested in that City anyhow. Especially since there is an apocryphal story that I was made near there, in the ruins of ancient Troy, hence the name Helen. I planned to spend an evening in that City and then on to Mumbai, refuel and fly into Singapore Changi airport where I would hop the commercial flight for the seven hours into Melbourne.

I figured if we left the day after tomorrow, we would have plenty of time to sightsee on the way. You might condemn me turning a serious assignment into a sightseeing venture. But I have always had wanderlust; I might add that both of my parents encouraged that. Now, I can’t see enough of the world. And since I had the time and the money, I intend to do just that. The only question was whether Mel was interested in coming along with me. The phone rang as I was thinking about that.

I heard Mel’s cheery voice. She said in her best below stairs accent, “You rang Madame!” I said, “Let’s grab a drink at Voltaire. There is something I need to ask you.” She said, still doing her housemaid imitation, “Certainly Madame, at your service Madame, when would Madame like to meet?” The place was just down from Victoria Station on the Circle Line, which I could hop at Gloucester Square, so I said, 8:30, which was an hour and a half from the current time. She said with a curtsey in her voice, “Very well Madame.”

I hung up with a huge smile on my face. Mel does that to me. I dressed myself to have a drink, and torture men. Then I walked down to Gloucester Square for the train to Victoria. The walk down to “the Vaults” was invigorating in the London evening.

I was sitting in one of the alcoves when Mel walked in. She is a paradox. She would be slight if it were not for her huge chest. But because she has such big tits, she looks both small and big at the same time. She was in a t-shirt and skintight jeans, which was not exactly the typical dress for the place, but she is not able to buy the sort of outfit I was wearing.

I had on dance tights and a Gucci sweater with a rabbit on it that looked like an illustration from the 19th Century edition of Alice in Wonderland. The sweater came down to the precise point that it would have to reach in order to preserve my modesty and decorum, and not a millimeter further.

The occasional flash of leg and even crotch and bum would be effective yet “arguably” modest. Sometimes I have my mother’s instinct to wind up men and because I was there on business, I thought I might as well indulge that little foible as a sidelight. I have been aware since my early teens that my legs and butt are exceptional and that little voice in my head, who I suspect is my mother, keeps telling me, “It’s a service to mankind to show them off.” I was getting the right response from all of the men in the place. Their lustful stares always make a girl feel special.

Mel bounced into the seat cushion next to me. Her boobs were clearly not in a bra since they gave one big, very weighty rebound and settled like two sandbags that had been dropped from a great height. She ordered something fruity, which is her standard drink. I was into my third helping of Blue. We talked some small talk, mainly along the lines of how Pru had survived her drugging and also how the job search was going.

Mel was not happy with what she had dug up. It wasn’t like she didn’t have offers. In fact, she had so many that they were confusing her, which is what a First-Class honors diploma does for you. It was just that she did not want to get into the 72 hour a week grind that the firms she was talking with had in mind. She said that she would set up her own shingle in the East End, but she didn’t have the money to do that, and her father couldn’t lend it to her.

I could have set her up with what I had in my petty cash drawer at home, but I had a different proposal. Of course, if she didn’t want to go along with what I had in mind I was still going to lend her the money, because she was a friend. But I was pretty certain she would jump at my offer. Without getting into the details of the group I was working for I told her, “I have an alternative for you that you might like.”

She looked attentive. She has pure black eyes to go with her jet-black hair and they can look like impenetrable marbles when her mind engages. She has a dark café au lait complexion not dusky like mine and she has the kind of immense eyes that you see in Indian temple goddesses. The rest of her face is very delicate, except her wide mouth, which conveys sensuality with “humor.” But it is the eyes in that essentially dark face that draw you in. I could understand why she is something of a legend among the girls in the East End.

I said, “I am doing a contract job for a group of people in Melbourne Australia and I need somebody to come along and provide legal support and research. The length is indeterminate, but it will probably be a couple of weeks and it starts next week.” I mentioned how much it would pay, which was essentially her salary in a London firm for a year. She got a strange look on her face. It left the impression of a person who had been crawling across the desert dying of thirst and had just been handed a big jug of ice water.

Mel is the Artful Dodger in a hot body. She said in perfect Mafiosi, “Who would I have to kill?” I laughed and said, “Nobody, but you would have to be ready to accompany me at the end of this week.” She put on a look of fake determination and said, “I am ready to go right now boss!” I said, “You are going to need to buy a bunch of new things, since we are going to have to play a role while we are there.”

She looked interested and said “Excuuuuse me!?” I laughed and said, “Some of my part is covert, in that I have to pretend I am somebody who I am not. You are also going to have to dress differently as well, in order to help sell that role.”

She looked extremely disappointed. She said, “I don’t have the money to buy new clothes, let alone the other things I would need to travel.”

I said, “The people who are hiring us pay for all of that.” That wasn’t true of course, but I could afford to outfit an entire battalion let alone one gorgeous Indian girl.

I said, “Let’s get together tomorrow in Knightsbridge and we can clean out the stock in the women’s department at Harrods.”

She laughed delightedly and said, “If that is part of the assignment then forward march!!!” We sipped our drinks and turned down several offers of company from everybody from a couple of randy looking 20-year old’s to a brace of very suave and sophisticated senior citizens.

I got the impression that I was the one who was inhibiting Mel’s evening, since there was an extremely good-looking Arab kid who kept coming back to our table to “talk.” I could tell by the way he was eying Mel what he wanted to “talk” about. Hence, not wanting to get in the way of her sex life, I paid the tab and told her good night.

We arranged to meet at the entrance to Harrods at 10:00 tomorrow. I was looking forward to the new adventure in front of me. The thought of having my smart, loyal and high-spirited friend along with me made the road ahead look bright and really fun.

Melissa didn’t know what to make of the offer. Hilley was a goddess in her mind and she was proud to be her friend. But what she was proposing was SO far beyond anything that Mel could possibly expect that she couldn’t really be certain Hilley wasn’t kidding.

The prior two weeks of interviews had been totally and utterly depressing. There would be a lot more money than she was used to. But the money didn’t make up for the loss of personal freedom. She would have to more-or-less commit her life to the firm she selected. And at age 24 Melissa did not know whether she was ready to do that.

Hilley had offered her a way out, with a clothing allowance on top of it. And if she was successful Mel knew that there was enough money in the offer to allow her to go her own way as a licensed solicitor. That alone would have sold her on Hilley’s proposition.

Then when you added in the travel to strange and exotic places and the chance to do interesting work with a woman whom she idolized; the whole thing seemed like a dream to her. Melissa had worked hard her whole life. She was doing it in the bosom of her family, but it was still tough work.

Being the oldest of four daughters was difficult enough, since she had to keep her three sisters in line. But the “little ones” were not expected to put in the time in the shop that she was. And since she was the “pretty one,” the attitude was that she didn’t deserve the special favors that were handed out to her sisters. So, Mel was always the responsible older daughter. And in that respect, she equated herself to Cinderella.

The only thing that gave her pleasure besides her studies and her friendship with Hilley and Pru was her frequent sexual encounters. Mel really liked sex and since she was extremely attractive, sex was a regular outlet for the frustrations in her life.

She did not consider her activities immoral. In fact, in her mind morality was for people like Hilley, not a poor girl from the East End of London. Sex was just plain fun. The chase and capture cost her nothing and the pleasure she got in the end was worth whatever effort she spent to get it.

She only had two simple rules. First and foremost, the guy had to wear a condom since Melissa was far too afraid of sexually transmitted disease to allow unprotected sex. Second, he had to be attractive and show her the proper respect. She never fell in love with them since she knew from long experience that men were basically interchangeable and pure bastards on top of that. But some of the ones who had adequately rung her chimes were invited back for the occasional rematch.

Hilley might have the money to keep a stable of REAL horses. Melissa’s stable was composed of good-looking guys. One of the boys, whom she liked the best, at least in terms of his potential, kept stopping by their table while she was talking with Hilley. He was the son of somebody in OPEC and he spent a lot of money on her. His performance in bed left something to be desired, but he performed adequately when the size of his wallet was factored in.

He joined her as soon as Hilley left. He said, “Who was that gorgeous creature?” Melissa said, “Down boy, she’s way out of your league. She just broke up with Gavin Crowe because she thought he wasn’t good enough for her.” He said, “You mean the guy who’s the Spur’s center back. I THOUGHT I’d seen her picture in the Sun!” Melissa said, “That one.”