Chapter Twenty #2
Helen’s eyes shot open. She licked her dry lips and listened to the erratic pounding of her heart. That had felt so real, as if she was actually having sex again. She stared at both her hands, then took in the rest of her body. She was glowing even brighter. What. The. Hell?
Grabbing the binoculars, she did another sweep of the crowd, ignoring those odd bursts of light, studying the stage and those on it. Everything appeared normal.
“See anything, Heath?” she asked.
“Negative.”
“You don’t see anything that’s odd at all?” she insisted.
“Negative. What do you see, Hell?”
People that glow. And oh, she was glowing too. Hell shook her head. Something had happened, was happening. Her inner voice had interrupted a...dream? Illusion? Whatever it was, that charge of heat hadn’t been spontaneous remote viewing.
“Nothing,” she muttered, but her body was still giving little tremors.
Two men walking down below caught her eye. She recognized them from the remote-viewing session; they were the men monitoring that other remote viewer. Or maybe, it was interrupted by a very quick flash of remote viewing. Jed at his private meeting in the VIP garage. Danger.
“Shit. Heath. Three o’clock. Two men in black tie and suits. I know they’re up to no good. I’m going to follow them. Can you track them while I get down there so I don’t lose them?”
“Affirmative.”
SO GOOD. SO DRUNK.
He was so alive.
Of course he would be okay alone in this room, were they kidding?
Go, go, go, leave him here. Yes, yes, he would track that girl bringing the bomb from Velesta—what’s her name again, Llallana—yes, Llallana with the pretty black eyes.
But she just got into the car after making some silly side trips; she wasn’t going to be here in Skopje for hours.
He wasn’t going to tell them about that last little bit, though.
Yes, let them wander out there doing whatever it was their boss had ordered.
He, Jonah Samson, Five-One, was going to roam free from their monitoring.
Free to slide inside any of these people to take and record his fill.
The streets were filled with wild women here and they gave him what he needed and more, so much more.
All fresh sexual memories, as much as he wanted.
He’d never experienced so many kinky things—threesomes and foursomes, even orgies between women.
Oh, how he liked that. He could tell some of these women didn’t want to do the sex acts he was recording but since he was at the receiving end of their services, he didn’t care.
It felt good to “feel” the sexual power over them, almost as good as really having their pretty little mouths sucking on him.
No, better. Because this way, with the serum enhancing his abilities, every part of him felt stronger.
And why not use his talents to achieve the kind of orgasm people would kill to have?
The absolute power of harvesting someone’s sexual pleasure for his own private mental recording, replayed with his body experiencing every detail.
Oh, this new collection was going to keep him happy for many, many nights to come. He smirked at his own pun.
He flitted into the male customers’ energy glow too, just enough to pick up their sensations of how it felt to be in those girls.
He was careful not to go too deep into those bubbles.
He’d discovered that some of these guys actually felt guilty while doing it, even if they didn’t admit it, but the feeling was there, and he definitely didn’t want that marring his enjoyment of his recording.
Shame, pain, all those feelings weren’t for him; he had enough pain of his own to deal with.
He remembered slamming into that other operative at COMCEN, the one who’d leapt through him when he’d opened all his channels to record.
He still had that guy’s darkness hanging inside him, like an icicle of acid, dripping once in a while to torment him.
He shuddered. No, don’t think about that, Jonah, or you’ll attract that kind of bad energy.
We don’t want bad and sad. We want this!
This was a young lady entering the place where his monitors had recently gone into. He recognized it from the flags hanging outside. Lots of security. They were waiting for some bad things to happen.
Jonah smiled. Well, there were the decoys, but the really bad thing wouldn’t arrive until much later. Mentally, he quickly checked Llallana’s location. Still driving, of course. He shrugged. He had lots of play time.
That lady he wanted was hanging onto the arm of her man.
They’d just done it this morning. He could tell from how brightly their energies glowed.
He liked them young and sexually open because their energies were the easiest to taste and take for his own.
They had less negative shit in them too.
He slipped inside the bubble, his channels open, looking for the source of the glow and sucking greedily.
It was good not to care. Except for an earphone in case they needed to communicate, no one was monitoring him.
He didn’t have to hide his hard on; in fact, he was probably moaning his pleasure out loud back in the room, but there was no one there.
He sighed in satisfaction. Alone. And this one was so good with her hands.
His head felt like he was going to explode from the pleasure. This was interactive media at its best.
Because he felt like it, he let out a maniacal laugh as he stumbled out. He hadn’t taken any alcohol, but he felt drunk. He looked around him. There were so many more to choose from...
“DE CLERQ, PASS ON TO Jed I’m going down to where he is the back way. Tell him the two CIA agents from Stratter’s are heading there too. He’ll know who I mean. I’m not sure what they’re up to.” Helen adjusted her hidden weapon, and added, “Tell him to be careful.”
“Ten-four.”
The access to her cubby hole was a ledge above one of the auditoriums. It took her a few minutes before she got off it and onto the closest floor. She ran toward the exit.
“Heath?” she snapped as she took the stairs.
“They’re eight minutes ahead of you and they took the elevator.”
“Dammit. Why am I always running down the stairs? Where are the elevators around here?”
“People on the lower floors are using them. It’ll take too long for you to wait. Didn’t you read the fine print in your contract? Running up and down stairs is SOP for most closed environment hostile operations.”
Helen made a rude noise. Heath Cliffe with a sense of humor? She must really be hallucinating. “Easiest access point to the garage then?”
“According to schematics, there’s a side door out the front. Take that. Service elevator to Level Two. That’s where the VIPs go to take the private elevator that leads to behind the stage.”
She didn’t care any more that she might be catching someone’s attention with her running. Jed was in danger. She knew this with every fiber of her being.
“Not enough time. Tell de Clerq to instruct Number Nine not to get into the car. Repeat. Not to get into any vehicle whatsoever.”
“This is de Clerq.” The quiet voice of the operations chief at Command came over her ear mic. “How do you know this, Hell? Try not to catch the attention of the group round the corner. Not a good idea.”
Helen slowed down. When she turned the corner, she went down on one knee to tie her shoelace. A group of five men walked past, talking quietly. They looked normal enough, but their shoes, she noticed, were new and the same brand. She straightened up and continued down the sloped walkway.
“I passed on your message, Hell,” de Clerq said. “He just signaled an acknowledgment. But how do you know about the vehicle, Hell?”
“Too complicated to explain,” Helen said. “Just that I have this feeling it’ll be dangerous once Jed enters the vehicle. Trust me on this.”
Please. She knew going out of position on a flimsy reason wasn’t going to make it past many of the other operatives listening in.
“Look,” she added, “don’t move the others.
They can stay in their current positions.
Just let me check this one out alone. It’s a sudden off-site meeting involving a suspicious character from our last operation, de Clerq.
We’re also waiting for the arrival of a certain explosive device without knowing the timeframe.
If you ask Eight Ball, he’ll give you a pretty high percentage calculation on something wacky happening in the garage area. ”
There was a few moments’ silence.
“Okay, Hell. This is your call.”
“This is Eight. I’ll back her up from behind,” Heath’s voice interrupted.
“Ten-four. Hell?”
“I’m almost there.”
Jumping off the banister onto the walkway below, Helen started sprinting.
JED BLINKED, BETRAYING nothing as he listened to Weber. That prickle of awareness, light as a feather stroke. He’d had that sensation before, not too long ago, in fact. Elena.
“I need to show you certain files but it has to be done in my limousine, away from any cameras. My man’s bringing it around over there, far from arrivals.” Weber told him. “We don’t have much time before the official ceremonies begin.”
Jed nodded. He had dealt with Weber before.
A hard-nosed bureaucrat who had been one of the original founders of Deutsche International, he was also one of the few inside the think tank today who was aware that its involvement in international politics wasn’t all black and white.
Weber and his group would have to have a very good reason to involve Deutsche International in the business of buying weapons, though, what with the think tank’s mission statement being world peace and disarmament.
From the last operation with Helen, it didn’t look like they were disarming the decoder for world unity.