“No.”
“Hashish, marijuana, cocaine?”
“Never.”
Madame Rosa scolded herself. “Ah, yes, how silly of me. Dulls the reflexes, of course. We can’t have that, can we?”
Easton just looked at her.
Madame Rosa stopped halfway up the first staircase. “Stop and see me on your way out. I’d appreciate your evaluation of our new subjects.”
Easton nodded and continued on alone. No mention had been made of price. There was simply an account to be settled at regular intervals, always in cash and never with argument. Easton reached the third floor, turned right, and entered the second room down.
The smell of sweet incense flooded his nostrils. The room was dimly lit, but Easton made out the two figures lying naked on the bed. A boy and a girl — twins. Just as he had ordered. Madame Rosa had outdone herself this time. Easton began stripping off his clothes. He was trembling, already aroused.
The girl moved from the bed and helped him with his pants, unzipping his leather boots and caressing his legs. She was thirteen or thereabouts, a dark-haired beauty with tiny mounds where her breasts would soon be. Her small nipples stood erect.
Her male twin was just as beautiful, dark hair cut not as long but smothering his ears and falling easily to his shoulders. He lay on the bed, legs spread, fondling himself, dark eyes glowing in the soft light.
Easton let himself be led by the girl onto the huge bed, careful to toss his shoulder holster to the side so it would be easily within reach. He fell backward on the sheets and settled next to the naked boy. The boy rolled on top of him, first hugging, then licking, then sliding down till his mouth neared Easton’s groin.
Easton felt the boy take him inside at the same time the girl parted his lips with hers. He groped for her thin buttocks and squeezed them to him, vaguely conscious of the boy’s head rising and falling, taking more of him in with each thrust. He wanted both of them, he wanted all of them. There was no time limit, would be no rude interruptions. They were his for as long as he wanted them. Madame Rosa’s never failed to satisfy.
Easton’s right hand wandered toward the girl’s small, hairless vagina, his left finding the boy’s long hair and caressing it as his head rose and fell … rose and fell … rose and fell. Easton felt the pleasure mounting everywhere, surging, yet he still had the sensation of something terribly wrong an instant before the door shattered inward.
At that same instant Easton’s metamorphosis back to himself was complete. He pushed the girl from him and went for his gun. But two figures had already stormed into the room with weapons blasting. The boy’s naked body absorbed the first barrage, red punctures dotting his flesh. The girl’s head exploded next to him, and Easton felt a volley of bullets pierce his abdomen as his hand closed on his pistol.
He might have lifted it from the holster had not the boy’s bloodied corpse collapsed atop him, pinning his arms. The boy’s sightless eyes locked on his, and Easton felt the bursts of pain everywhere the pleasure had been only seconds before. He was still trying for his gun, finding it just wasn’t there anymore, as his breath rushed out and all that remained was the boy’s dead stare before oblivion took him.
“I’ve already been briefed on this mess,” the President said, striding grimly into the Oval Office. “I want to know what’s being done to clean it up.”
The two men seated before his desk rose as he approached it. CIA director Barton McCall was the more nervous looking of the two. But McCall always looked that way, just as Andrew Stimson, head of the ultra-secret Gap, always appeared calm.
“New York is cooperating brilliantly,” Barton McCall reported. “Under the circumstances we couldn’t ask for more. Fortunately the woman called us first.”
The President stopped halfway into his chair. “What woman?”
“Madame Rosa,” answered McCall. “Owner of the … house where Easton was killed.”
“She knew his identity?”
“Apparently.”
“Terrific.” The President’s eyes flared toward Andrew Stimson. “Helluva ship you got running there, Andy.”
Stimson seemed unfazed by the comment. “Madame Rosa’s has enjoyed an exclusive clientele for fifteen years. Easton never told her a damn thing. She knew he was intelligence and therefore knew approximately whom to call this afternoon. She’s got a feel for such things.”
“And apparently Easton had a feel for something I don’t exactly remember seeing in his file.”
Stimson shrugged. “An agent’s private life is his own business.”
“Not when it gets him killed.”
Stimson nodded with grim acceptance. Years before, when the CIA had come under increasing scrutiny and the methods of the NSA under fire, a gap resulted between what the intelligence community needed to bring off and what it could effectively get away with. So a new organization was created to take up the slack, appropriately labeled the Gap. Stimson was its first and so far its only director.
“Just remember, sir,” he said to the President, “that the pressure men like Easton are under sometimes forces them into undesirable pastimes.”
“The mess at Madame Rosa’s can hardly be referred to as a pastime, Andy.”
“I think we’ll be surprised when we find out the identities of the customers in the other rooms at the time.”
The President cleared his throat. “The real question, gentlemen, is whether Easton’s murder was random, perhaps the result of someone else’s kinky fantasy, or whether it was carefully orchestrated.”
“Evidence seems to indicate the latter,” reported CIA chief McCall. “The men behind it were pros all the way. No one saw them go in and we’re not even sure anyone saw them go out. We got a report that two black men were seen leaving the area immediately after the murders, but even that’s sketchy. The weapons used were Mac-10s, a pair of thirty-round clips totally emptied.”
“Jesus …”
“Easton took fourteen slugs alone, the kids about the same.”
The President raised his eyebrows. “We going to have any problems from the relatives of those kids?”
McCall shook his head. “Madame Rosa was their legal guardian. She’ll take care of everything.”
The President didn’t bother pursuing the matter further. “Someone must have wanted Easton dead awfully bad. He was due in soon, wasn’t he?”
“Tonight,” answered Stimson. “That’s when the briefing was scheduled, by him I might add.”
“So he had completed his current assignment.”
“At least enough to bring it to the next level.”
“Okay, Andy, refresh my memory of what he was on to.”
“Internal subversion,” Stimson replied. “Terrorist groups, revolutionaries, that sort of thing.”
“Specifically?”
“Something big. Easton felt he was on to a group whose size and resources went way beyond anything we’ve faced before. His reports were vague, but he was closing in on the top. He believed there was a time factor involved.”
“Which this afternoon’s incident has apparently confirmed,” the President noted. “Now all we have to do is find out who was counting the minutes. Terrorists?”
“That’s the assumption,” Stimson acknowledged. “But the Gap’s dealt with plenty of terrorist groups here at home without losing agents to such brutal assassinations. Like I said before, whatever Easton uncovered was a helluva lot bigger than a run-of-the-mill bombing or hostage situation.”
“And since we have no idea what,” said the President, “I hope you gentlemen have devised a contingency plan to find the missing pieces.”
“He might have left some bit of evidence for us somewhere,” McCall suggested.