With my talents, I can pick and choose what jobs I can take. That means I get to take long vacations, although given that my services are always in demand, some vacations can take an interesting turn. Like the break I took in Europe last year.
It was some time after the Swamp mission I described in the previous chapter. Although that job had been thoroughly successful, it left me a little drained, not to mention a little sore, so I decided to skip over to Europe to rest up, do a little shopping and sight-seeing and generally recuperate.
I can’t tell you which country I visited, for reasons that will become apparent, but as always, I booked a room at the most expensive hotel in the capital city, spent my days sampling the best of the local cuisine and spending the hundreds of thousands of dollars the agency had paid me on amusing jewelry, fascinating gadgets and gorgeous dresses.
Of course, men are the same, whatever part of the world you happen to meet them in, so I had to deal with my usual quota of embarrassing attempts to seduce me. The failed pick-ups come in all shapes and sizes, though my least favorite are the entrepreneurs. You know the type. They get lucky in business and gradually it goes to their head. That’s probably why they talk such gibberish.
One particular evening I was sitting in the hotel lobby, enjoying a quite drink when a sharp-suited, greying American took the seat opposite me, uninvited. This was bad enough, but he then proceeded to speak at me for over five minutes, telling me how much he was worth, how his website was disrupting the financial sector, how he wanted to synergize his verticals or some such nonsense, all the time attempting to beguile me with his embarrassingly obvious psychological seduction techniques; presumably learned at great expense at a seminar on ‘How to Talk to Women’.
If it weren’t for the fact that my strict policy is only to kill for money rather than pleasure, I would gladly have disposed of him there and then, but instead, I settled for a slightly less violent approach. After listening for some time to his blathering, I leaned forward, my lips close to his ear, and informed him that I didn’t give a fuck about him, his business, his brand or his cryptocurrencies and that if he didn’t fuck off and leave me alone, I would put a bullet in each of his balls.
That appeared to do the trick as he disappeared faster than a dot.com start-up, leaving me in peace. Sadly, the peace was soon shattered by another hopeful in an expensive suit. This one was less assertive, and asked me if he could talk to me or buy me a drink. So I decided on a different approach. Looking at him with the sexiest look I could manage, I licked my lips, crooked my finger at him and then stood and headed to the hotel lifts, glancing back at him with a smile.
Wide-eyed, he followed me to the lifts. I pressed the button for the Presidential Suites, and as soon as the door swished shut, I moved close to him, my breasts pushing against him, my lips nearly touching his, but just as I saw him shutting his eyes to kiss me, I pressed the muzzle of my pistol against his temple. His eyes snapped open side. With my other hand, I slammed the emergency stop button of the lift and we juddered to a halt. His eyes betrayed his terror as I smiled at him.
“Now, why don’t we have a little chat, you slimy bastard?”
“Wh…what about…” he stuttered.
“About why men like you think that you have a fucking God-given right to ruin my evening drink. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t put a bullet in you.”
“I…please…”
“Believe me, I could do it, and I could do it quietly. I’d be out of here without a trace and all they would find is your body, and your brains splattered across the inside of a lift.”
“Please…I wasn’t trying to…I came to ask your help.”
“Help? Bullshit.”
“It’s true. I…I’m the political agent for a US senator.”
“Who?”
“Senator Smith. She…she’s staying in the city. She sent me to arrange a meeting with you. I…if you let me show you my card, I can prove it.”
I stepped back, keeping the gun trained on him, just for my own amusement, while he fumbled in his inside pocket, bringing out his business card, which he handed to me, shakily. The card checked out, so after a moment or two of theatrical hesitation, I lowered my gun. Tension flowed out of him like air from a deflating balloon and he wiped his forehead.
“Sorry about that,” I said, smiling.
“That’s…that’s okay,” he replied, though he looked several shades paler than when he had first got into the lift.
Incidentally, if you haven’t already guessed, Senator Smith was not her real name. As you will see, it has been necessary to obscure the identities of one or two people in this story, for their own protection, as well as for mine.
Senator Smith’s agent had enough composure left to make the arrangements for our meeting, and the next morning, I drove my hired sports car up a winding hillside road through a stunning pine forest to the private villa where Senator Smith was staying.
The villa was modest, compared to some of the properties in the area, and there was no security at the gate. Senator Smith’s agent met me at the door, winced a little when he saw me, then invited me inside and took me through to a study, where the Senator was waiting.
She stood as I entered and shook my hand, but her grip was uncertain and her smile was weak, and although she was immaculately dressed, she wore no make-up. Worry was written all over her face.
“Thank you for coming. I am very grateful.”
“Your gratitude is nice, but I may need more than that if you want me to help you,” I replied, taking one of the leather chairs in the room without waiting to be asked.
“Of course,” she replied. Sending her agent out of the room, she waited until she’d heard his footsteps fading away along the corridor.
“You may know that I am a US Senator.”
“Of course. I’ve seen you on television.”
“As a result, I get recognized all over the place. Even in Europe. So I had to send Charlie to arrange this meeting. I apologize for the subterfuge.”
“No need to apologize,” I replied, “I enjoy subterfuge. Although I’m not sure Charlie is cut out for it.”
She smiled, but the smile soon faded.
“The fact is, I need your help. I knew all about your work from a contact at the agency, and frankly, you sounded like the only person who could help me.”
“Well, let’s see, shall we.”
She nodded.
“The fact is, speaking plainly, I’m being blackmailed.”
“I see. And you can’t go to the cops?”
She shook her head.
“It’s delicate. I can’t trust them not to leak anything to the press, and if they do, well, my career is pretty much over. And maybe my marriage, too.”
“Sounds serious,” I said. “Who is doing the blackmailing?”
“I don’t know for sure. I just got an anonymous call on my cell phone saying that unless I paid them one hundred million I would be humiliated publicly. Ruined, in fact.”
“A hundred million? They must have something pretty damn hot on you?”
“There were texts too. They suggested I divert money from federal sources, or get it from my husband’s corporation. I…there’s just no way I can pay that.”
“You still haven’t told me what they are using to blackmail you.”
She sighed and looked away.
“I had hoped…imagined that…I might be able to enlist your help without going into the details. But I see that is unrealistic.” She took another deep sigh. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes and she hesitated before speaking.
“Whatever it is, you can trust me. I have much easier ways of making money than blackmailing US senators, believe me.”
She nodded.
“It was while I was in college. I was a bit wild then. You probably read about it in the political press years ago. It didn’t hurt me at the time, but as far as the voters thought, I’d just messed around, had a few boyfriends, got drunk a few times. But it was more than that. I…I starred in a film.”
“A film?” I asked, intrigued.
“An adult film,” she added, looking down. “It was pretty hardcore stuff. I’m embarrassed to even think about it. I just thought it would be…well, fun. I was drinking a lot, partying a lot, and I didn’t imagine, didn’t dream that one day I would be a senator, and a wife, and a mother…”
“And someone has got hold of the tape?”
She nodded, wiping her eyes.
“Who else knows about it?”
“There were only three people at the filming. A guy I was at college with, the cameraman, he was on older guy, and the director. He and the camera guy met me at a bar where I was working, asked me if I wanted to be in an adult film, and I thought what the hell.”
Her voice began to break at that point, so I let her compose herself before I spoke.
“So what would you like me to do? Find out who’s doing it and get rid of them?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I just…I just want the film, the originals, and any copies. I don’t want anyone hurt. I’m not…I’m not hiring an assassin.”
I smiled.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Great, thank you. What about your fee?”
“Forget about the fee. I’d be happy to help.”
The Senator looked at me, a little bewildered. It was probably rare for her to come across someone who didn’t want to extract an immediate price in exchange for a favor. But I had my reasons for not asking for a fee. For a start, blackmailers were scum. It sucked that in this day and age, a woman’s ‘reputation’ still had to be protected. And, more importantly, having a Senator who owed me a favor could well prove advantageous at some point in the future.
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