Follow Focus
36
The Sting
WE SLIPPED OUT of the warehouse we were in. Of course, there was no car waiting for us; Maurie had taken that. I had no idea where we were, so Adrienne and I had to trust Cherianne to get us to the airport. She spotted a car in a lot nearby and reached in to hotwire it. Clever girl.
While she drove, she reviewed what she anticipated would be Maurie’s plan. It sounded like another foolish caper.
“The thing to remember is that the major has never shot anyone. He likes to wave his weapon around but I don’t think he’s ever even cleaned it. The same is not true about the terrorists he’s brokering to. The athletes in Munich were not the last that Black September has murdered. They are prepared to kill and to die.”
“Great. Just what we need.”
“Why aren’t you carrying a weapon?”
“I don’t believe in violence.”
“Good luck with that. You need to make sure you stay out of the way then. And protect her. You can’t always depend on women to protect you.”
“I will always protect my master,” Adrienne said.
“You don’t deserve her,” Cherianne said shaking her head. “There’s a phone booth to the right of the main entry. Go there and call your people. Tell them what’s going down. Then hide. I’ll try to warn your crew. No promises, though. If I see the major and his contacts, I’ll have to stay hidden until I can take them out. There are no night flights out of Tehran, so there won’t be many people in the terminal. Just be ready to move and get in the air as soon as there’s an opportunity.”
She pulled up to the passenger terminal at the airport and let us out.
“Good luck, Nate. Get out of the country as quickly as possible.” Cherianne drove away.
I found the phone and tried the number for the embassy.
“American Embassy security,” the voice snapped into the phone.
“It’s Nate Hart. We’ve been released.”
“Hold a moment.” The operator handed the phone off.
“Nate! Where are you?” Robert barked into the phone.
“At the airport. Is everyone else okay?”
“Yes. You and Adrienne?”
“Fell into a vat of shit and came out clean, at least I think so. We should get out of here. Robert, there is still a terrorist cell active who want the rest of the equipment that was stuck in the cargo hold. They are being led by that operative who hijacked our plane in December a year ago. He’ll probably go for another hijacking.”
“Ronda and I are on our way. The crew is at the airport in the pilots’ lounge. We’ll call them when we arrive. There’s no sense alerting anyone before we get there,” Robert said. “Here. Someone has to say hello to you.”
“Are you okay?” Ronda screamed.
“Yes, hon. We might have to attend to a couple of bruises on our pet, but she did a wonderful job.”
“We’ll be there in half an hour.”
“I think I’ll take Adrienne to a quiet corner and sleep for a bit.”
Adrienne and I crept off to a corner in the shadows behind a ticket counter and just hunkered down. I held her as she shivered.
“It’s okay now, Pet. No one is going to hurt us. We’re going back home now.”
“I was worried about you, Master. How could you face down that man with a gun?”
“After our first encounter, I requested and received his service record. Most of what Cherianne said was in it. According to it, he’s never fired his weapon. Several other operatives have talked about how he likes to brandish it around, but in the after-action report our former pilots gave, they said they’d never known him to use it in all the time they’d ferried him around for Air America.”
“That is still too dangerous. I would have died if you’d come to harm.”
“How did you get loose? You were handcuffed just like I was.”
“I am a submissive and have often been in handcuffs,” she giggled. “Any submissive knows not to leave herself vulnerable in the hands of a sadist. I always have a key with me.”
“I don’t know how you do it, but as soon as I’m able, I’m going to arrange a big reward for you. You were amazing.”
“She was playing with me. I could tell before you called me off that I was not landing any blows. She could have killed me in an instant.”
“I am so thankful it didn’t come to that,” I said, kissing her.
I heard footsteps in the concourse and peeked around the corner of the ticket counter where we were hidden. I saw the major walking toward the pilots’ lounge at the other end. Two shadows were following him at a distance.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said. “The major is headed toward the pilots’ lounge and two people are following him.” I watched them go by. “Crap! Here comes Robert and Ronda. Stay put.”
I headed down to the opposite end of the ticket counter and hurried across the open space to where Robert and Ronda were coming through the doors.
“Major Sanders, who kidnapped us, just headed toward the pilots’ lounge. Two guys with guns are following him. I don’t think they are with him. They must be the buyers who were expected,” I said as I caught Ronda around the waist and crushed her to me.
“Where’s Adrienne?” Ronda asked.
“Behind the ticket counter,” I whispered.
“Good,” Robert said. “Both of you go to join her. There’s a belt that takes luggage out to the tarmac. It won’t be running until flights start coming in in two hours. Crawl down the ramp and head alongside the building toward the private terminal on the other side of the lounge. That’s where our plane is. Wait for the pilots and get on board.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“My job.”
He headed down the concourse and I saw he had his own sidearm out. Ronda and I went behind the ticket counter and relayed the instructions to Adrienne. She went first down the luggage ramp followed by Ronda and me.
It was dark, both inside and outside the tunnel. We pushed the flaps open at the end stepped under the weather awning. I suppose even Tehran has foul weather. It was certainly cold and windy enough. We saw someone out on the tarmac patrolling from aircraft to aircraft, but no one was close to the building as we crept along.
We were about a hundred feet away when we saw our flight crew emerge from the pilots’ lounge. Behind them, the three figures emerged, but it looked like the major was being held between the other two. Great. Just great. We waited until we saw Robert emerge, sticking to the shadows. The pilots unlocked the plane and motioned Nancy aboard first. Then they turned to argue with the—apparently, they were hijackers. Suddenly, I saw another shadow under the plane. I saw two flashes and heard a muffled gasp. One of guys holding the major crumpled to the ground.
The other guy spun to see where the shot came from and the major dove to the ground, leaving the other terrorist fully exposed. I saw Robert raising his weapon as the terrorist spotted him. Then there were two more flashes from under the plane and the terrorist fell.
The major jumped up and ran for the door of the plane, only to be grabbed by the pilots and pinned between them. I ran toward the plane.
“Robert! Stand down!” I called as he raised his weapon toward the plane where the shots had come from.
“Come on out,” he commanded, not lowering his weapon.
“It’s okay. She’s ours,” I said, coming up beside him.
“Thanks, Nate,” Cherianne said. She appeared with her hands raised. Robert lowered his weapon.
Luke had pulled the major’s gun from his belt and was looking at it as Jay held the major’s arms pinned behind his back.
“What a filthy piece of equipment,” Luke said. “Don’t you ever clean your weapon?” He ejected the clip and emptied the chamber. Cherianne snapped a pair of handcuffs on him.
A car came around the corner with no lights and pulled up next to us. Two guys dressed in black with face masks jumped out. Cherianne pointed at the two on the ground and the men picked them up and loaded them into the back of the car.
“SAVAK,” Cherianne said to Robert. “The Shah’s secret police. They’ll make sure the bodies are never discovered as soon as the major has identified them. Unless you want to take this person back to the United States to stand trial for his various crimes.”
“We should do that if we know he’s an American citizen,” Robert said.
“Yes, I am. The kid there can vouch for me. He knows who I am,” the major sputtered.
“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” I said calmly. “I have no objection to SAVAK questioning him.” I carefully did not mention Mossad.
“Well, I guess you can take him, then,” Robert said. “We have no evidence that he’s American.”
“Wait! You know very well who I am!” the major exclaimed as the two guys from SAVAK took hold of his arms and marched him to the car with the bodies.
“Thank you for coming back, Cherianne,” I said.
“When I dropped you off, I parked and came around the terminal to hide under the plane. I told you he’d bring them.”
“It looked like he was trying to escape from them,” I said. “I think he thought he could get out of the country without you or us.”
“What are your plans for Sanders?” Robert asked.
“We have a rehabilitation program for him. You don’t need to worry about it. It would just get all caught up in the American judiciary system. My ride’s waiting,” Cherianne said. “Good luck in the future, Nate.”
She got into the car with the others and they left. We boarded the plane and just collapsed into our seats.
There was no one in the control tower and no other planes were lit up on the field. Luke taxied us out to the end of the runway and turned on the plane’s landing lights. We were off the ground and flying west in near silence.
“Would anyone like a drink?” Nancy asked. She looked pretty disheveled.
“You look a wreck, girl,” Ronda said.
“Thanks,” Nancy laughed. “That place is a lounge, not a hotel. We got as much sleep as we could until those guys broke in.”
“Didn’t anyone else wake up?” I asked.
“Nobody there but a couple of bush pilots. They took one look at what was going down and hid in the kitchen,” Nancy said. She unlocked the liquor cabinet and poured us each a glass of cognac. “Who was the scary woman? She just killed those two guys?”
“She’s Mossad,” I said. “The two guys were members of Black September. Mossad is still hunting them all down.”
“Is that what the whole theft and kidnapping was about?”
“I think she was hoping for more, but those two will never be seen nor heard of again, I’m sure.”
“What are we going to do about an installation here?” Ronda asked. “I delivered the dispatches to the ambassador, but we were mostly concerned about getting you back.”
“I move we skip an installation here,” I said. “I’m seriously considering skipping a few others.”
“I don’t blame you, honey. I’m so glad Adrienne was with you.”
“She did land some good blows, didn’t you, pet?”
Adrienne held out her hands. She had scrapes on her knuckles where she’d hit Cherianne.
“Oh, dear,” Nancy said. “I have a first aid kit in back.”
Nancy got the first aid kit and carefully doctored Adrienne’s knuckles as Ronda smooched all over the girl.
“I suppose that isn’t the end of this,” I said to Robert.
“The embassy was alerted and the ambassador was ready to call the Shah. But of course, we had to call the State Department. The ambassador put a call through to let them know you’d been recovered and he promised to call again when our plane was in the air,” Robert said. “You know how the department works, though. My guess is we’ll have orders to leave for Washington as soon as we touch down in Muscat.”
His prediction was pretty much accurate. We went home from the airport in Muscat about six-thirty in the morning. At eight, Robert stopped to pick us up. We barely had time to kiss our wives and children and head back to the airport.
Ronda and Adrienne had to go with me to Washington, DC. At least the three of us—plus Robert—were in first class seats with decent food for the next twenty-eight hours. I had no idea who we’d be meeting with once we arrived.
After a layover in London, we arrived in Washington DC at eight o’clock Friday morning. Two State Department cars met us. That was the first I saw our flight crew, Luke, Jay, and Nancy. Apparently, they didn’t rate first class travel. Sucks.
We got to the Truman Building and were conducted to different conference rooms for debriefing. Ronda and I were left together, but Adrienne was separated. I wasn’t very happy about that, but there was no one I could even complain to. We were brought coffee and a few minutes later, Mr. Martin and our secretary, Josie, came into the conference room.
“Sorry about separating you from Adrienne. She’s fine,” Martin said.
“Are you two okay?” Josie asked, rushing to us.
“We’re fine now,” I said. “Why separate Adrienne?”
“Her relationship to the two of you as a submissive is known. We didn’t want any undue influence over what she said by having you in the room as she gave her statement. When she’s finished, we’ll all get together for lunch.”
“What gives, Mr. Martin? I’m not even sure why we were called in,” I said.
“Oh, come on, Nate. You were abducted and equipment was stolen in a foreign country while on embassy business. Of course we want you here for a debriefing. First off, I wanted to see with my own eyes that you were okay. And I could hardly leave Josie behind. Besides, we need to have notes taken. So, start off by telling me how you are doing.”
“I’m not very happy,” I said. “The ease with which two terrorists could abduct us and steal equipment was amazing. The fact that one was an inept clown and the other was a Mossad agent kept it from being a complete disaster, but it was still stupid to have an embassy car pull up to our plane and have two terrorists grab us.”
“I agree. I want to make sure it never happens again. Ronda, what happened from your perspective?” he asked.
Ronda pushed her pad over to him. I did the same. We’d both spent time on the flights from Tehran and then from Muscat composing our reports on legal pads. They needed to be typed up.
“I knew you’d have written this up like you do all your reports. Josie,” he said, “send these to steno to have them typed up.”
Our secretary took the two pads and handed them out the door, then returned to continue taking notes. I knew she took shorthand and had a feeling she could capture everything that was said in the meeting.
“Now, I’d like you to tell me without the prepared speech exactly what happened. I understand you weren’t feeling well, Ronda.”
“We had a really rough landing in Tehran,” she said. “In fact, it was rough all the way from Kabul. I don’t usually get upset, but I was airsick. As soon as we were on the ground, I ran to the loo and threw up. Nate wanted to help me, but I told him to go ahead and get loaded for the embassy and I’d catch up as soon as I washed my face and changed my blouse. I shooed Adrienne after Nate and let Nancy help me get cleaned up. Robert and the pilots got off with Nate and Adrienne.”
“And that took about how long after Nate got off the plane before you were ready?”
“About ten minutes. I don’t know exactly. I grabbed a clean blouse out of my travel bag and changed. Nancy took the one I’d soiled and said she’d get it taken care of. When I stepped off the plane, I didn’t see anyone, but I heard the guys’ voices around the back at the cargo bay. I assumed the embassy car must be there. When I reached them, it was just Robert, Luke, and Jay. They’d had difficulty getting a cargo strap unfastened and had everything sitting at the edge of the cargo compartment, ready for us to carry to the car.”
“Everything?”
“I guess not. When I asked where Nate and Adrienne were, Luke waved back the way I’d come and said they’d already taken the first load to the car.” Ronda took a deep breath. “I yelled, ‘What car? No one’s over there!’”
“That was the first they knew Nate and Adrienne were missing?”
“They ran around the back and looked where I assumed the car was supposed to have been and there was no one there. That was the first any of us realized that Adrienne and Nate were gone.”
We continued through Ronda’s report, which included the actual embassy car arriving and Ronda’s decision to re-stow the equipment in the cargo bay and lock it up. They left the crew with the airplane and drove to the embassy. As soon as they reached the embassy, they got everyone on alert, having to call the ambassador at home since we were expected to go to a hotel after dropping the equipment and not train until the next day. The embassy was put on lockdown and the Secretary of State’s office was called to indicate there had been an abduction and possible terrorist threat.
Ronda delivered the diplomatic packet to the ambassador and she and Robert stayed with the embassy security team waiting by the phones until we called about one-thirty in the morning.
“Did you get food?”
“Oh. Uh… Yeah, I guess so. I don’t really remember eating it,” she said. “Nate, did you get food?”
“Adrienne and I didn’t eat anything until we were on the plane headed here yesterday morning,” I said. “I kind of forgot about that. Speaking of which, we haven’t really had breakfast yet. Coffee’s nice, but I could use some food.”
Mr. Martin grabbed the conference room phone and barked orders to someone to get full breakfasts from the cafeteria for everyone who was in debriefing. Food arrived in about fifteen minutes and he gave us some time to eat before we continued. While he was waiting, he received a paper from a messenger at the door and sat to read it.
He looked up at me curiously and waited until I’d finished eating and took another drink of coffee.
“Okay, Nate. Your turn. From the time you got off the plane.”
I went through the events as I recalled them: The problem with the jammed cargo strap, Adrienne and me taking the camera and box of ID blanks to the car, being hit in the head, handcuffed, and having a bag over my head until we arrived in the warehouse.
Then I went through the process of showing them how the equipment worked and praised Adrienne for having escaped her handcuffs and done battle with Cherianne.
“I recognized the woman from a photo session I did with her in Stratford this summer,” I said. “She said she was part of Mossad. I could believe it, the way she fought Adrienne. At least this time, I got a photo of her face.” I pulled the ID picture I took of her out of my pocket and handed it to Martin. He looked at it and nodded.
“Did you get your bruises looked at?” he asked.
“Bruises? I don’t think I have any,” I said.
“Adrienne’s report says you took at least two solid blows to the ribcage and were hit on the head.”
“Well, yeah. I don’t think… It’s a little sore,” I said.
“Show me.”
I stood up and pulled my shirt out of my slacks and up high enough to see two dark blue splotches on my ribcage. Shit! No wonder it was sore.
“Adrienne! She fought with Cherianne for several minutes!”
“She’s with the doctor right now. I want you to see him next. We’ll get x-rays and an exam. We can break for that now. We’ll pick up with everyone together after you’re finished.”
“I’m bruised, but fine,” I said. “How is my Fifi?”
“Also bruised a little and my knuckles scraped. I told you she was playing with me. With all the blows I thought I landed, I doubt if she is bruised as much as I am.”
“I’m so sorry you were brought into all of this. I thought we would have a nice time traveling together for a week and Ronda would enjoy being with you, too,” I said.
“Ronda enjoyed her a lot,” Ronda said from just behind me. “And Ronda intends to enjoy her more as soon as they let us go and we get to our hotel. I’m just so glad you are both okay.”
“It really irritates me not to have a phone at the house so we can call Anna and Patricia to let them know we’re safe and sound.”
“We need to get one.”
“They don’t have lines running to the neighborhood. One of the small things they overlooked when they planned the development for some five hundred families,” I said.
“They will be at the embassy at ten tomorrow morning,” Ronda said. “We can call them then.”
“What time is that here?”
“Two in the morning. Adrienne will need to keep us awake so we can make the call,” Ronda giggled.
We went into a larger conference room and joined our flight crew and Robert, Mr. Martin, Josie, and ten or so others. I recognized the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Johnson, and some of our other contacts. Mr. Martin started it off with a brief overview of what happened.
“You all have copies of the transcripts of the debriefs,” he said. “It seems to have been a case of a sting perpetuated by Mossad that involved our people in a dangerous situation. I believe a strong statement of protest needs to be sent to Israel.”
“That won’t help,” said a voice I recognized but hadn’t seen the owner of. I turned and he was behind me. Wallace Morgan of the CIA. “It wasn’t Mossad.”
“You’re saying the woman, Col. Cherianne Kline, who identified herself as part of Mossad is not Mossad?” Martin asked.
“We ran her image from the photograph through our channels. Saying she is with Mossad is like saying Sanders is with the Agency. It’s a relationship she once enjoyed, but no longer has.”
“Explain,” Mr. Johnson barked.
“C. Kline—I don’t know if her real name is Cherianne or not—was a special agent for Mossad. She considered her agency and the German police to have betrayed Israel. When Safady and the Al-Gasheys were released in the deal by the Germans to save hijacked Lufthansa 615, Kline went crazy. She felt that even Operation Wrath of God, carried out by Mossad, was looking in the wrong place and was too slow. She went rogue. Mossad has claimed several kills of the Black September group, but we suspect some are actually by Kline. Officially, Mossad washed their hands of her after the Lillehammer affair in ’73. Unofficially, they praise her work.”
“And what is Sanders’s relationship with her?”
“I’d have to say that is as she described. She uses him. I will also say that SAVAK denies any knowledge of any events of that night,” Morgan concluded. “I would expect them to deny any involvement, but they seemed genuinely surprised when our agent made contact. I suspect the men who cleaned up the airstrip were Kline’s, and that she freed Sanders so they could continue their partnership.”
“Crap!” I whispered. Then louder, “Does that mean we have to keep watching over our shoulders for these yahoos?”
“I doubt it. Your transcript sounds like you did a pretty good job of discounting the value of what you are doing. They won’t try the same thing again.”
“That’s comforting,” I mumbled.
“If I may, Mr. Secretary, this affair illustrates a problem I pointed out last fall. Nate and Ronda are transporting sensitive materials and are inadequately trained to defend them,” Robert said.
“You were with them. Exactly how did your training help in this instance?” Mr. Johnson said. “Never mind. We’ve read your debrief. I do, however, think we need to tighten security around this system. Donald, how can we make sure this isn’t something that gets repeated?”
“I believe keeping Mr. Hart and Miss May unarmed is strategically sound. They are couriers and foreign service specialists. They are not combatants, and it would be contrary to our agreement with them to attempt to arm them,” Martin said. “However, I, too, believe we need to tighten security. If we are agreed that this program should be rolled out further and that the team will be traveling to Australasia in the coming weeks, we need to assign security to them.”
“We’ve been focusing our efforts on mission security for our diplomatic installations,” a man said. I didn’t know him. “And for the record, Robert, you were not on this assignment as security for Hart and May. I do not hold you to blame for any of this. Keep doing what you have been doing. Assess the vulnerabilities of our missions and help us get them corrected. It will take us a few days to determine the correct team to accompany Hart and May. Ray, with our boss’s approval, I think we can have a team in place by the end of next week.”
“Miss May, what is your next scheduled trip?” Mr. Johnson asked.
“Pakistan and Nepal, February 9-14,” Ronda answered.
“Can we make that date, Greg?”
“I’d say no problem.”
“We only have three months of this remaining,” Martin said. “Four at the outside. I think the mission has been a success so far.”
“Very well,” Johnson said. “Nate and Ronda, and your flight crew. Robert, you, too. And Miss Baudelaire. You all comported yourselves well under extreme conditions. Citations will be placed in your files with our thanks. While a citation is worth the paper it is written on, it will come into play at your next review. Thank you for what you are accomplishing.”
People applauded and the meeting broke up.
“You really aren’t afraid to die, are you?” Mr. Martin asked as he stared at me across the dinner table. He insisted on taking Josie, Ronda, Adrienne, and me out to dinner after we finally broke up the meeting.
“Afraid to die?” I said. “Well, I don’t want to die. But I don’t think that means I’m afraid. I just have a lot to live for.”
“You faced Major Sanders as he held a gun on you and taunted him. How many bullets would it take to restore his manhood? You have to know he could have killed you right then.”
“Nate! You didn’t say that,” Ronda exclaimed.
I looked at Adrienne.
“I am sorry, master. I simply told them everything I remembered.”
“I guess I forgot to mention that,” I said. I winked at Adrienne and she blushed. Maybe a wink is not the usual way to indicate to a slave that she is going to get punished. “After our encounter a year ago, I requested and received a copy of the debrief documents from the crew. They were pretty blunt about Sanders being a braggart who liked to wave his gun around but had never fired it. I just played on that. I thought I might actually be able to disarm him, but Cherianne prevented me from having to try.”
“Don’t do it again!” Ronda said. “Never!”
“I won’t, hon.”
“You know, the popular opinion in the administration, and I’d have to say within the military, is that conscientious objectors are just cowards who won’t go to fight because they are afraid of dying.”
“Aren’t all soldiers in combat afraid of dying, Mr. Martin?”
“Only the smart ones,” he snorted. “I could have gotten you out of your alternative service with just a slight bit of a nudge to your draft board. But you told me that wouldn’t be fair or honest. You would serve your alternative service. I think that is a little outside what most people would do. Then you went through with the FBI’s plan to use you as bait to catch Warren when he came to kill you. That was not the act of a coward.”
“They were supposed to arrest him before he posed a threat. They didn’t need to kill him or let him attempt to kill me,” I growled.
“I agree. If the crimes of our government were all exposed, our country would cease to be. Regardless, you’ve proven again what I knew all along: that you are not a conscientious objector because you are a coward.”
“The draft, the war in Vietnam, and the general use of American military in enterprises other than the defense of our country are all illegal, unethical, and immoral. We’ve used American military resources to prop up a corrupt government that is in no way better than the invading forces of Ho Chi Minh. We’ve done it under the pretense that a communist regime in southeast Asia is somehow a threat to America’s freedom. We brainwashed common soldiers into believing that by going to Vietnam, they were somehow defending America. That is what I object to. I have also sworn never to carry a gun or use one. I will adhere to that commitment.”
“I hope that after your mandatory selective service is concluded, that I can convince you to stay with the State Department. We need you.”
He raised his glass and we all followed suit as he toasted our mission.
“You know, one thing I’ve been wondering,” Ronda said. “When I set the schedule for the trips this week, we were planning to arrive in Iran fairly early in the afternoon on Sunday, spend two days there and then head for Kabul. It wasn’t until we were on the plane that I found out we were headed for Kabul instead of Tehran. How did that get changed?”
“What?” Josie said. “When I was preparing the packet for the courier to bring to you, I received a phone message from you changing the schedule. I had to come in early the next morning to call the teams in the two embassies to get them on the same schedule. I sent a telex confirming the change to Mr. Brice and the crew, and enclosed your copy in your courier packet.”
“You got a message from me?” Ronda said.
“Yes, ma’am. It was waiting on my desk when I came in on Wednesday. It was too late for me to call the embassy by that time,” Josie said.
“Mr. Martin, our problems may not be over if someone knew enough to leave a message for Josie changing our schedule to match their plans,” I said.
“Oh, shit!”
“Alone at last,” Ronda sighed as the three of us finally got into our room at the Plaza.
“Yes. I suppose that means I need to deal with a naughty pet who bragged to our bosses about how I smarted off to the major,” I sighed. “Keeping a pet can be so trying at times.”
“Master?” Adrienne said in a small voice. I turned to find her kneeling on the floor.
“What is it, Fifi?”
“Could you find it in your heart not to punish your pet this evening?”
I glanced at Ronda, who looked at me with horror. We both hit the floor next to Adrienne.
“What is it, Adrienne. Are you well?”
She looked at us with tears in her eyes and broke down sobbing.
“I’m sorry, Master. I am so sorry.”
“You really have nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart. Tell me, what is the problem?”
“I’m really really sore. I didn’t realize how much she hit me until I was in the doctor’s office.”
“Honey, let’s get you into a bath and let us take care of you,” Ronda said, kissing her hair.
I started carefully removing her clothing as Adrienne winced in pain. What I uncovered was nothing like what I thought I would find. She was covered with bruises.
“How did this happen? I was sure she was pulling her punches when I stepped between you,” I said. Ronda ran to the bathroom and began drawing a bath.
“Did it feel like she was pulling a punch when she hit you?”
“Well, no, but I assumed I took her by surprise.”
“She did pull her punches. She was sending a very clear message to me and to you. At any time, she could have killed us. Any blow could have been our last. Her skill was so far beyond mine that I scarcely touched her.”
“I had no idea. Oh, my sweet girl. Come. Get in the tub and relax. We’ll doctor your bruises with your healing salve.”
“I’m so sorry I am not up to playing on our final night together,” she said.
“I think we’re going to stay an extra night,” Ronda said. She’d stripped as well and joined Adrienne in the tub. “If we catch the Sunday flight, we’ll still get home by the end of the day on Monday. I want that picture you took of her, Nate. I want to make sure I kill her when I see her.”
“Honey, I can’t give you the picture. They kept it. It’s just as well. We aren’t likely to ever see her again. We just don’t run in those circles and she knows now the equipment isn’t valuable enough for her to risk another shot at it. I think she got the two people she wanted to remove this time.”
We bathed Adrienne and dried her, then took her to the bed and found the salve she’d always used for soothing the bruises when she’d been spanked. I hadn’t seen anything like these bruises, though, since Elizabeth had gone berserk.
“My sensei recommended this salve when he was training me. There were times when I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. That is the price of a martial art,” Adrienne said as she lay between Ronda and me.
At two in the morning, we placed an international call to the embassy in Oman. Patricia and Anna were both there, even though it was Saturday.
“Are you all okay?” Patricia asked. “We’ve been so worried about you!”
“Everything will be fine,” I said.
“Do we need to pack up and leave Oman?” Anna asked.
“My loving girls, we would miss you terribly if you came back to the States without us. We’re coming back to Oman Sunday. We’ll get back Monday evening.”
“Sunday and not Saturday?” Patricia asked.
That got us started telling about Adrienne and how we hadn’t realized how badly she’d been beaten.
“Let me speak to her,” Anna demanded. Adrienne had been drowsing, but woke up when we made the phone call. I handed her the phone.
“Yes, Mistress Anna. I tried to defend my master. I was too weak.— You are too kind.— I cannot come to live with you in Oman. It would not be right.— I will be available to fly to you at a moment’s notice if you need me. I love you, Mistress.” She handed the phone back to me.
“See if you can’t persuade her to come and live with us for the rest of the time we are in Oman,” Anna said. “We need to take care of her.”
“I’ll do my best, but you know that isn’t the way our relationship works,” I said.
“I know that, but this week has just been too much. You were home such a short time that we didn’t even get to hold her and tend to her,” Anna said.
“And you,” Patricia added. “Are you bruised as well?”
“A little, but not as badly.”
“Really?”
“I’ll vouch for it,” Ronda said. “He’s got a couple of good black and blue marks, but nothing like Adrienne, or even like what he’s had before.”
“I’m not liking this job anymore,” Patricia said. “I want our family back together in our own home.”
“Well, I think we should plan on getting back earlier than we thought,” Ronda said. “They’re sending a couple of bodyguards for us for the remainder of our trips. That means they don’t really want us to take any more time getting things done than necessary. I think we can wrap everything up by the end of March. Why don’t we start pulling things together so we can ship our household back early in April. We might have to do some more work in Chicago that month, but we’ll all be together back home.”
“I’ll start packing today if it means we can move back and be together again,” Anna said.
Saturday morning, we slept late and ordered room service. Ronda and I spent the morning pampering our pet and eventually making love as well. We went out for a walk in the afternoon and all cursed having not brought warm enough clothes. We sat in a little café and drank coffee for an hour before hustling back to our room and making love again.
“Do you know how important you are to our family, Fifi?” I whispered. “Whether you are making love to us or playing with the children or helping guide us through the intricacies of Hollywood politics…”
“Whether you are teaching us to be more worldly or exploring our different character aspects or dressing us for a party…” Ronda continued.
“We love you and cherish you far more than any pet. Toni and Alex love you. Patricia and Anna love you. Ronda and I love you. Please, don’t ever put yourself in danger for us again. I was hoping you would get free and escape, not that you would fight for me.”
“But my master. My mistress. Don’t you see that I love you, too? That seeing you in danger, I cannot help but act. It is in my heart.”
“You have the heart of a bull mastiff,” Ronda laughed. “And the body of a chihuahua. You cannot go against bigger and more powerful opponents.”
“Am I a yappy little dog?” Adrienne laughed.
“No, but you are a precious and beloved woman. Not just a pet,” I said. “Please consider coming to be with us. To live with us. We’ll adapt to the lifestyle needs. You are not such a burden that we can’t enjoy life together.”
“I wish that I was wired for that kind of relationship. Please let me remain your mistress and your pet. Don’t try to make me into a member of your household. It might be too much for any of us to be able to stand.”
“At least say you will be waiting for us when we get back home. We’ll go up to Stratford as soon as we are finished with our work and try to just recover for a few weeks. I’d say we’d go on a vacation, but I think just being home will be all the vacation any of us want,” Ronda said.
“I will be waiting for you. You are my beloved family.”
Sunday morning, we went to the airport. Fifi had the morning flight westbound and it nearly broke our hearts to wave goodbye. Then Ronda and I waited until our overnight flight to London and on to Muscat.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
