Chapter 9

Monday, September 17, 2007

As I had every day since I started doing The Program, I walked out the door naked and got in Dan's car. Dan, David, Anastasia and Grant had been giving me a crash course in CIA training, and I was getting pretty good.

"We might have an assignment for you." Dan said.

"Already, cool."

"How big is your family on nudity?"

"Well, we always went swimming naked, and since I started going around naked they've been hanging out around the house and the neighborhood naked."

"Good."

We picked up Anastasia and I held her hand as we walked into school. Even though she hadn't wanted our relationship to get serious so as to avoid emotional entanglements, we were still dating as far as anyone else was concerned. We were trying to figure out how to break up while still being able to see each other in public without it looking odd, I wanted to try out some of the new sex skills she was teaching me on other girls.

School went normally. Since I wasn't in The Program, I had to dress out for gym, but I stripped off again as soon as I got to the locker room. It was beginning to feel weird wearing clothes, and I wasn't looking forward to winter.

Normally on Mondays we practiced martial arts after school, but Dan drove me to his house instead.

"Would you like a drink?" he asked as we walked through the doorway.

"Uhh ... sure, gin martini if you don't mind." I was still working on building up my tolerance to alcohol.

"We have an assignment for you."

"Already?"

"Yes, your tolerance for public nudity will come in handy. We've tracked the centrifuges to the west side of the island of Nimos, in the Aegean Sea. It just so happens that the east side of the island contains Greece's largest nudist resort."

"How convenient."

"You've got that right. We've arranged for your family to win a week's vacation on the island over the Christmas holiday. You'll meet up with the rest of us, and we'll shut down whatever's going on on that island."

"Do we know what's going on on the island?"

"The NSA has hacked into Valikke Industries' internal email system. We think they're planning to hide suitcase nukes in major cities and threaten to set them off if Mr. Valikke isn't given one trillion dollars and sovereignty over the various islands he owns."

"What's he want with a bunch of islands?"

"Most likely to use as extremely low-cost manufacturing hubs with no governmental oversight. The Bangladeshi government has started complaining about the way he treats his workers, and this is the perfect way to get around the problem, if you don't consider the publicity issues."

"Well, a trillion dollars can buy a lot of good publicity."

"Indeed. Because of the nudism Q Branch has had something of a hard time coming up with useful gadgets. You'll be given a waterproof version of my watch that also has a built-in communicator, removing the need to carry a mobile phone. We've also created augmented-reality Wayfarers and MI6 will provide a speedboat for our use."