“How long have you been thinking about that speech?” Arnie asked. Ryan’s turn of phrase was too polished for extemporaneous speech.
“A little while,” the President admitted.
“Well, when that decision comes through, be ready for a firestorm,” his Chief of Staff warned. “I’m talking demonstrations, TV coverage, and enough newspaper editorials to paper the walls of the Pentagon, and your Secret Service people will worry about the additional danger to your life, and your wife’s life, and your kids. If you think I’m kidding, ask them.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“There’s no law, federal, state, or local, which compels the world to be logical, Jack. The people out there depend on you to keep the fucking weather pleasant, and they blame you when you don’t. Deal with it.” With that, an annoyed Chief of Staff headed out and west toward his corner office.
“Crap,” Ryan breathed, as he flipped to the briefing papers for the Secretary of the Interior. Smokey Bear’s owner. Also custodian of the national parks, which the President only got to see on the Discovery Channel, on such nights as he had free time to switch the TV on.
There wasn’t much to be said for the clothing people wore in this place, Nomuri thought again, except for one thing. When you undid the buttons and found the Victoria’s Secret stuff underneath, well, it was like having a movie switch from black-and-white to Technicolor. This time Ming allowed him to do her buttons, then slide the jacket down her arms, and then get her trousers off. The panties looked particularly inviting, but then, so did her entire body. Nomuri scooped her up in his arms and kissed her passionately before dropping her on the bed. A minute later, he was beside her.
“So, why were you late?”
She made a face. “Every week Minister Fang meets with other ministers, and when he comes back, he has me transcribe the notes of the meetings so that he has a record of everything that was said.”
“Oh, do you use my new computer for that?” The question concealed the quivering Jesus! he felt throughout his body on hearing Ming’s words. This girl could be one hell of a source! Nomuri took a deep breath and resumed his poker face of polite disinterest.
“Of course.”
“Excellent. It’s equipped with a modem, yes?”
“Of course, I use it every day to retrieve Western news reports and such from their media web sites.”
“Ah, that is good.” So, he’d taken care of business for the day, and with that job done, Nomuri leaned over for a kiss.
“Before I came into the restaurant, I put the lipstick on,” Ming explained. “I don’t wear it at work.”
“So I see,” the CIA officer replied, repeating the initial kiss, and extending it in time. Her arms found their way around his neck. The reason for her lateness had nothing to do with a lack of affection. That was obvious now, as his hands started to wander also. The front-closure on the bra was the smartest thing he’d done. Just a flick of thumb and forefinger and it sprang open, revealing both of her rather cute breasts, two more places for his hand to explore. The skin there was particularly silky… and, he decided a few seconds later, tasty as well.
This resulted in an agreeable moan and squirm of pleasure from his… what? Friend? Well, okay, but not enough. Agent? Not yet. Lover would do for the moment. They’d never talked at The Farm about this sort of thing, except the usual warnings not to get too close to your agent, lest you lose your objectivity. But if you didn’t get a little bit close, you’d never recruit the agent, would you? Of course, Chester knew that he was far more than a little bit close at the moment.
Whatever her looks, she had delightful skin, and his fingertips examined it in great detail as his eyes smiled into hers, with the occasional kiss. And her body wasn’t bad at all. A nice shape even when she stood. A little too much waist, maybe, but this wasn’t Venice Beach, and the hourglass figure, however nice it might look in pictures, was just that, a picture look. Her waist was smaller than her hips, and that was enough for the moment. It wasn’t as though she’d be walking down the ramp at some New York fashion show, where the models looked like boys anyway. So, Ming is not now and would never be a supermodel— deal with it, Chet, the officer told himself. Then it was time to put all the CIA stuff aside. He was a man, dressed only in boxer shorts, next to a woman, dressed only in panties. Panties large enough maybe to make a handkerchief, though orange-red wouldn’t be a good color for a man to pull from his back pocket, especially, he added to himself with a smile, in some artificial silk fabric.
“Why do you smile?” Ming asked.
“Because you are pretty,” Nomuri replied. And so she was, now, with that particular smile on her face. No, she’d never be a model, but inside every woman was the look of beauty, if only they would let it out. And her skin was first-class, especially her lips, coated with after-work lipstick, smooth and greasy, yet making his lips linger even so. Soon their bodies touched almost all over, and a warm, comfortable feeling it was, so nicely she fit under one arm, while his left hand played and wandered. Ming’s hair didn’t tangle much. She could evidently brush it out very easily, it was so short. Her underarms, too, were hairy, like many Chinese women’s, but that only gave Nomuri something else to play with, teasing and pulling a little. That evidently tickled her. Ming giggled playfully and hugged him tighter, then relaxed to allow his hand to wander more. As it passed her navel, she lay suddenly still, relaxing herself in some kind of invitation. Time for another kiss as his fingertips wandered farther, and there was humor in her eyes now. What game could this be…?
As soon as his hands found her panties, her bottom lifted off the mattress. He sat up halfway and pulled them down, allowing her left foot to kick them into the air, where the red-orange pants flew like a mono-colored RAINBOW, and then—
“Ming!” he said in humorous accusation.
“I’ve heard that men like this,” she said with a sparkle and a giggle.
“Well, it is different,” Nomuri replied, as his hands traced over skin even smoother than the rest of her body. “Did you do this at work?”
A riotous laugh now: “No, fool! This morning at my apartment! In my own bathroom, with my own razor.”
“Just wanted to make sure,” the CIA officer assured her. Damn, isn’t this something. Then her hand moved to do to him much the same as he was doing to her.
“You are different from Fang,” her voice told him in a playful whisper.
“Oh? How so?”
“I think the worst thing a woman can say to a man is ‘Are you in yet?’ One of the other secretaries said that to Fang once. He beat her. She came into work the next day with black eyes— he made her come in— and then the next night… well, he had me to bed,” she admitted, not so much with shame as embarrassment. “To show what a man he still is. But I knew better than to say that to him. We all do, now.”
“Will you say that to me?” Nomuri asked with a smile and another kiss.
“Oh, no! You are a sausage, not a string bean!” Ming told him enthusiastically.
It wasn’t the most elegant compliment he’d ever had, but it sufficed for the moment, Nomuri thought.
“Do you think it’s time for the sausage to find a home?”
“Oh, yes!”
As he rolled on top, Nomuri saw two things under him. One was a girl, a young woman with the usual female drives, which he was about to answer. The other was a potential agent, with access to political intelligence such as an experienced case officer only dreamed about. But Nomuri wasn’t an experienced case officer. He was still a little wet behind the ears, and so he didn’t know what was impossible. He’d have to worry about his potential agent, because if he ever recruited her successfully, her life would be in the gravest danger… he thought about what would happen, how her face would change as the bullet entered her brain… but, no, it was too ugly. With an effort, Nomuri forced the thought aside as he slipped into her. If he were to recruit her at all, he had to perform this function well. And if it made him happy, too, well, that was just a bonus.
I’ll think about it,” POTUS promised the Secretary of the Interior, walking him to the door that led to the corridor, to the left of the fireplace. Sorry, buddy, but the money isn’t there to do all that. His SecInterior was by no means a bad man, but it seemed he’d been captured by his departmental bureaucracy, which was perhaps the worst danger of working in Washington. He sat back down to read the papers the Secretary had handed over. Of course he wouldn’t have time to read it all over himself. On a good day, he’d be able to skim through the Executive Summary of the documents, while the rest went to a staffer who’d go through it all and draft a report to the President— in effect, another Executive Summary of sorts, and from that document, typed up by a White House staff member of maybe twenty-eight years, policy would actually be made.