Chapter 6

The Crab Bait file was interesting but I had the final scenario planned out inside my head by the time I'd finished reading. The politics of the complaint was pure Yank political need to appear to have clean hands. It would take little imagination to complete. The thing that would tax my imagination was the exit strategy. There would be absolutely no just getting on a 747 bound for Costa Rica and waving to security as we board. I'm going to just leave it for a few days and allow a plan to gestate and mature naturally.

I sent Eric over to the second safe house to create the new expanded team from the new people with all the official trappings. He was back again two hours later, shaking his head in disgust.

"Do you remember when you first joined Sal and me, I think it was Dijon, no, no, Besançon, in the Franche-Comté region and I told you that we had to disappear as we were being hunted. We were only in our second season and our three Privates were taken by Thereon and were killed and they were hunting us in the sewers. You asked me what you could do to help, I told you and you just did it. I found out later, not from you so much, but from your later actions that you could have gotten us out of there in half the time because you have been doing stuff like that all your life. I didn't know how, though, as you were so young."

"I have seven older sisters. I had to be devious to not be blamed for everything, and to get out of scrapes."

"Oh! I didn't know you very well, then. You didn't argue with me and after following my instructions to the letter, you then went out and Thereon disappeared - without a trace. I still don't know what you did but what you didn't do was stress us out at the wrong time. It only now occurs to me to ask, why you were there in that ancient tin pot little town in the first place?"

"I was just doing my job. I was the terrorist expert. I was following terrorists ... you, in that case ... or, really, your inept facilitator. I traced a bloke with a very strong Aussie accent, on a seemingly genuine Indian passport, who arrived the week before at Orleans Airport. He was tagged by the Sûreté, and I was called. Thereon had been a problem for them for years. When Bill came over, he led me to you. Putting him in there, was like throwing a newborn lamb into a den of lions. I just fixed the problem."

The Colonel shook his head in amazement, "Those inexperienced idiots were sitting there telling me what I should do to fix our problem and wouldn't obey direct orders because I have lost accreditation with the hierarchy. They won't listen and they will die. I don't care if they die. I just don't want them to take us with them."

I didn't want to stress him further but Dad had to do as I told him, "Do you trust me?"

"Actually, I do. It's them I don't trust."

"I never will tell you my complete plan ... never have, never will. Everything is 'need to know.' If I told you everything, you would react differently than you would otherwise. Now, please trust me as everything is currently going as I expected and wanted. Only one person has reacted differently from what I expected but I will use that difference and run with it. I want them to see your frustration and my lack of security awareness."

"Why did you send me over there?"

"Because I expected them to do what they did. If I went over there, I would expect a different reaction because they are terrified of me. But we still couldn't trust them because they are not part of the team. Don't tell them any more than I tell you to. If they put the heavy on you for information, tell me and I'll fix their little red wagon. So we'll keep the other house apart and isolated and, if they find out where we are, we're moving. I know you have another house in line so be prepared. No more than two more days here in this house and shift. Trust me. At the moment, we are right on top of the situation."

Sal said, "We have gotten out of 'Rose' ... or 'Rebecca', or whatever ... that the money put out to pay for our services is not paid to our government. As far as I understand, anyway. I'm working on where that money is actually going. It seems to be part of a sleight of hand con job. It's not going where we expect. I think that is the whole root of our problem. The initial contractor is verifying the kill as authentic by the sergeant, Rose is telling us the job has been paid for, placing the money into the debit file as paid, and someone else, probably in the CIA, is receiving it as a bonus. We're talking about multiple millions per exercise, here. Our Government is paying the bill but not being reimbursed."

The person, who wasn't acting as I had expected, was sitting with Sal in the lounge room. The old man had gone to bed after a very long conversation, which put his mind at ease. This was not a cluster fuck, as he'd been thinking, but the beginning of our next job, which was a two pronged operation. I had two things yet to work out: money, and an exit scenario.

Sal was wearing a light blue transparent nightie top. She also had on a pair of men's boxer shorts, in fluorescent red, with black hearts pierced with arrows all over them. They were as attractive as week old dead fish. The top was diaphanous, almost as transparent as mosquito netting, with her long pink nipples making long pink dents. It made me wonder why she was wearing it at all.

The material faithfully followed the contours of her body, almost like a coat of paint. While Sal was watching TV her nipples were erecting and contracting without thought or reason. Was it the ambient room temperature or the sight of the naked, shaven headed, Sicilian actor on the television screen? He was pushing the girl on top of him onto the bed and off his sweat covered body. They had just made love with the wide double doors open to the sea outside; fade to surf crashing. Sal's concentration appeared to be on the SBS cop drama in Sicilian dialect Italian as if she was reading the written interpretations across the bottom of the screen, which was an act for the benefit of her Israeli companion. As far as I can make out her Italian was better than mine, which was better than many of the native Italians who only understand their local dialect or TV driven mid-Italian.

Sal asked, "What does she mean, I like your bald body? What woman would say that?"

"She actually said, 'I like the feel of your smooth and hairless manhood, it glides over my naked body.' Both interpretations are correct but whoever interpreted didn't like the sexual connotations inherent in the dialogue. Like at the start, a short way in, the detective was attacked by the mourning sexy widow of a man he had shot. She said to him, "ottenere scopata, ti buco del culo" or 'get fucked, you arsehole' and the interpreter wrote, 'get stuffed you animal.' If you could understand Italian, you'd know that the interpreters are misquoting all through the show because they didn't like the language being used. The same person would film Lady Chatterley's Lover and the man would weave flowers through the hair on her head, while in the book he wove wild flowers through her pubic hair. I can teach you Italian if you like, though not up to the stage of fluency.

"Pat said that he needs a month, minimum, to prepare to take that job on. The men aren't sufficiently trained. I believe him because Kyle couldn't even compete with your father and Kyle's thirty years younger than him. Pat makes your dad look like an old man and your dad makes Kyle look like a raw new recruit, even though Kyle is supposed to be in prime shape. You are as fit as Pat. You're built like a professional dancer where he is built like an athlete, half way between a swimmer and a five hundred meter runner. If you wrapped your thighs around me, you could snap me in two. A girl would become terrified if you put them around her head, even if it was only to have sex. Do you wrap your thighs around his head, and is he afraid of what you can do?" asked 'Rebecca'.

I got it, then. It was foreplay and interrogation, all in one. I sat silently in a lounge chair at the back of the room. For Sal to make the girl comfortable, she made her think she desired her. Maybe she actually does desire her, which would make the interrogation more intuitive, spontaneously bringing out true information, her opinions and beliefs.

"We are very new lovers. There are a lot of things we haven't done yet. Give us time. He is huge (who me? not the last time I looked), and we haven't got past having his cock inside me, yet. He makes my eyes water and makes me come just by putting himself inside me. I'm very inexperienced in sex ... with a man ... as I was a virgin, up to two weeks ago."

Well said, my beauty! Of course it doesn't really take in, you having those same legs around my face until you passed out last night, does it? A virginal inexperienced girl, who was only skilled with other women, could be an attractive proposition for 'Rebecca'.'

'Rebecca' was dressed to seduce, but with more subtlety. Sal was clad like they were some mates, watching TV until her husband arrives. 'Rebecca' had on a nightie set, like a young teenager. The pants were loose and gaping around the legs, they show glimpses of her sex and pubic mound shaved into the form of a landing strip. The landing strip was overgrown forest-like, during the initial questioning. Both were dressed for the effect they wish to have on the other woman.