SPIES HAVE MOTHERS TOO!
...and Steve Victor's mother worried!
Steve couldn't understand why. After all, everything was normal . . . normal for Steve Victor, that is. He had a new top-secret assignment from the highest levels of the United States government. As usual, it was on a “take it or else” basis, the enemy’s aim was world domination, and he was totally on his own, without even a hope of assistance if he goofed. What could be new?
Well . . . maybe life was a little tougher than normal. The enemy had even greater resources and fantastic weapons than usual. Even more women than usual were giving him the runaround. Then, too, he was facing a rap for a murder he hadn't committed. And there seemed to be a clever Romeo who was his exact double committing all sorts of dastardly acts which he was getting blamed for... .
Oh, P.S., Mom; He lost this pants!
MY SON, THE DOUBLE AGENT
Ted Mark
1966
Dear Mom:
Why haven’t I written in so long you’re ashamed to face the neighbors? Trouble—that’s why! Double trouble! Now, don’t panic. I’m all grown up now and I have to cope with my problems myself. So please don’t hop the first plane to Malta, you’ll kiss it and make it better. You’d only complicate things, and they’re complicated enough. And don’t get your feelings hurt, either. Look at it from my point of view. It’s not easy being an overprotected spy!
But there is one way you can help me. Think back over the years to when I was twins. I hate to bring up the tragedy, but it could be important. Now, as you told me the story, we were twin baby infants and one of us drowned in the bathtub. (Down in my Freudian subconscious, I’ve secretly never been sure which one. I know you said it was my brother, but who, today, doesn’t have an identity problem? Oh, well, I guess that’s for me and my shrink to work out.) Anyway, aside from the fact of whether it was my twin brother or me who drowned, what I wanted to ask was this: Are you sure the immersion was fatal? No, it’s not my macabre sense of humor talking. Honest, Ma, I’m being serious. You see, lately, I’ve had reason to doubt that it was.
What reason? Good question, Mums. But the answer isn’t simple and they haven't built a nutshell big enough to hold it. It involves a latter-day would-be Alexander the Great, crimes of violence, crimes of passion, international intrigue, derring-do, and a whole gaggle of glamor girls who are, as you used to put it, “no better than they should be” — which I maintain is no worse than you’d have them be. I can hear you now, sighing and saying what could I expect, the line of work I’m in, if only I’d of been a doctor like you wanted. But that’s all chicken soup under the bridge, Ma. The thing is that O.R.G.Y. is my career and it’s not my fault if that makes me valuable to my country in espionage work. Besides, I’d have made a lousy doctor; the sight of blood upsets the hell out of me. Yeah, I guess that’s not so good for a spy, either. But who isn’t a little square-peg-in-a-round-hole-ish?
Now how did I get off on all that? What’s really important is this business of my twin brother maybe not having really drowned and running around with my kisser and knocking people off. It’s pretty disturbing, I can tell you. So will you please write and tell me if you’re absolutely sure he went all the way down the drain. Maybe then I’ll be able to concentrate on S.M.U.T.
What’s S.M.U.T.? Read the book, Ma. And while you’re doing that, think of your ever-loving son,
Steve
chapter one
"HA-ha-ha-ha-ho-ho-ho-ho-hee-hee-hee-hee-ha-ha-ha! ”
“Wh did you kill our man in Manila, Mr. Victor?”
“Ha-liyo-hee-ha-ho!” I replied. I’d never been in Manila in my life. And I hadn’t killed anybody-—recently.
“Who betrayed us to you?” The voluptuous and naked bust inflated impatiently with the question.
“Hee-hee-ho-ho-ha!” I didn’t know the answer anyway, so it didn’t matter that I was laughing too hard to speak .
“Who is the traitor in our organization? ” The exotic, upside-down face of the Maltese beauty twisted savagely.
“Ho-ho-hee-hee-ha-ha-ho!” I was running out of breath from the agony of my laughter.
“Who is your contact in S.M.U.T.? ”
"Uh-ha-uh-ha-uh-ha-uh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” I went off on another uncontrollable spasm of giggling.
She stepped away then to give me time to get over it. Now I had an upside-down view of her full figure. There was a black half-slip covering the bottom portion to the knees. The sunlight shining from the window behind her made it transparent, though, and her lissome legs were completely visible. The slip hugged sleek, tall-girl hips and then angled in to a quite narrow waist. Above the waist, as I mentioned, she was naked. Large breasts swayed like ripe melons—melons still on the vine, but ready for plucking-and her green eyes glittered with a perverse sort of enjoyment as she waited for me to stop laughing. She smoothed back her long black hair. It had fallen over her olive-skinned features-—a sultry, Latin sort of face—in the course of her provoking my laughters. She set it right with her left hand.
In her right hand she still held the long goose feather. I forced myself to keep laughing so she’d hold off using it again. It wasn’t easy, because my ribs ached awfully. Partly they ached from the laughing, and partly from the muscle-straining position I was forced to assume.
It really was one helluva position. I was standing, but bent over so that my hands were touching my ankles. Each hand was tied to the corresponding ankle. And my legs had been spread wide apart so that the calves could be laced to a pair of bedposts in such a way that I could neither squat nor straighten up.
This particular position served another purpose. It left the most intimate part of my anatomy clearly exposed from the rear. It was this dangling sac which my tormentor had been so delicately stroking with the goose feather. A byproduct of the pose was that I could see her clearly—although upside-down—through my parted legs. And her ace told me she was enjoying this exquisite torture to the point where it was becoming more important to her than getting answers to the questions she was posing. It didn’t matter, though, because my mind was truly as bare of answers as my body was of clothing.
When I had taken my clothes off just a short time before, I’d certainly never anticipated this. This Maltese cat had looked as if she might scratch if I strayed into just the proper erogenous zone, but I sure hadn’t figured her to truss me up like a turkey and start tickling me to death. How could I have known what she had in mind when she plucked that tail-feather from a live—and then suddenly lively--goose?
The plucking took place only a few minutes before she’d enticed me into this room. I’d only known her an hour or so then. She’d lured me in a very unusual way. She’d squirted milk at me from the udder of a Maltese goat.
It never occurred to me that she might have done it deliberately. Indeed, at that moment, as I wiped the fresh goat milk from my eye, I took it for granted that it was my fault. My intense and calculated curiosity had made me stick my nose into the udder area-where it certainly didn’t belong—and the resulting eyewash seemed just (if unpasteurized) deserts.
My over-eagerness stemmed from the fact that this was the first lactating Maltese goat I’d found since arriving in Malta the evening before. You see, the opportunity to observe just such a milking was a large part of the reason I’d come to the Mediterranean island. It was a strange quest, even for the man from O.R.G.Y.