Convention Surprise

I didn't say anything. I couldn't – for two reasons, one I was so stunned that by boss of 20 years had turned out to be a traitor, and the second was because my mouth was stuffed with sandwich. Even if what he said was true, none of it was a satisfactory explanation of why I had been videoed fucking each of them over the last twenty odd years, or why I was not here with them. My face must have shown my question, because Sam continued.

"We looked around for someone to run the company and we decided you were it. Then there are those specs there, and some new samples we just picked up. They're what we retrieved from the foreign buyer after we busted your CEO. We need you to tell us – now - if they're the real thing you manufacture or good fakes of your stuff. We're trying to figure out how long these guys were selling this stuff and just exactly what they compromised. You've been here since the start of this project, you're the senior chemist that worked on this, Adam and Mac cleared you of any complicity in the leak, so you've been elected."

"What now? You want me to look through this stuff now? I don't have anything to test the samples with, or compare the specs to. The specs are incredibly complicated, and I don't know the formulas from memory."

Sam looked at me for a few seconds and then decided, "Doctor," he began, I hadn't been addressed as "Doctor" since I'd gotten my first Doctorate in Chemical Engineering so he got all of my attention. "A certain country's diplomatic airliner is scheduled to depart Kennedy Airport in New York in 2 hours with certain diplomats, plans, specifications, and a number of bottles on board. Depending on what you can, or cannot tell us, that plane will, or will not, reach its destination. The specs here are exact copies of the specs we took off the plane 3 hours before Mac met you downstairs in the bar. The bottles Bill has were obtained from the plane 45 minutes ago. I expect you'll do the best you can for us, given the circumstances."

I looked at the pile of spec drawings. The sheets were the size of regular building blueprints and there were at least 2 dozen of them. The chemical spec sheets were on regular size paper, but here were at least 50 pages of them. Then there were the dozen or samples themselves. I sighed, and reached for the stack of chemical spec sheets. I may as well start with what I really knew something about. I perused the first page quickly, then looked quickly at the second, third and fourth pages. The formulas make no sense; neither did the ones on the next page or the next. A quick run through the next 30 pages showed the same nonsensical equations.

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I looked up at Sam. "So Sam, what does all this," I asked waiving a hand at all the paper on the table. "Have to do with you taking video of me getting my bottom fucked for the last 20 years?"

He had the good grace to be embarrassed. "I'm sorry Joe, I really am. But we knew you and several others were at risk for blackmail, and we knew you were having secret meetings with different gay men, and we had to know what was going on. We had to know every last word, and every thing you were doing. We couldn't take the chance you were writing something down and passing it on, so we filmed you every where you went that we possibly could. It just so happened that I had the hoots for your ass once I got a good look at what you were doing with your friends, and decided it might as well be me that was enjoying you, and ever since then I've made sure your supervising agent wanted to play with you too."

"So you've been the special agent in charge of pimping my ass for your agents for the last 20 years?" I asked in awe.

"Sorry Joe, I really am. But it was either have someone watch you very closely, or arrest you for sodomy and lock you up. We couldn't take the chance of what you knew getting into the wrong hands. I have to confess I liked the part about watching you up close and personally a lot better than having to arrest you. I really did enjoy my personal time with you," Said Sam quietly "Now please, are those the real thing or fakes?" He asked waving his hand over the documents on the table.

"What happens if I tell you?" I asked, thinking I didn't like the sound of his voice or the implication.

"That's not something you need to, or want to know, Joe," he said softly, but the menace in his voice scared me.

I must have looked shocked, because Sam continued quietly, "Those people on the plane plan to use this stuff on a major city in Europe to kill a couple million people in the name of on some bullshit revolution, and I don't think we should let 'em do that. So please, are those the real deal or fakes?" He asked again waving his hand at the papers.

Five minutes later I said without any doubt, "These design sheets are fakes, in fact of these papers are fakes."

"What about the samples?" He persisted.

"What samples?" I asked. I didn't see anything on the table that looked like one of our sample jars.

"Here," Bill said, lifting the large a closed tote bag he had brought into the room onto the table. "We got these just before we came over here. Have a look."

I opened the bag, turned it upside down and dumped its contents out on the table. As I did all four of them jumped forward in unison and tried to catch the six small metal cylinders tumbling out of the bag.

I smiled widely, at the effect of my practical joke. No sample jar for any biological weapons grade agent would be damaged in the least by simply dropping it on a table. They were designed to withstand cataclysmic impacts,, such as being run over by a train, or burned with an acetylene torch and all four of them knew it, but didn't have my years of stress tolerance in dealing with such agents and so were hypertensive.

I scanned the bottles on the table, and froze. The last bottle out of the bag was one of our latest and most secret, to be used only for the latest generation of a very nasty biologically engineered bug – one that if used on a city would indeed kill millions.

The look on my face told Sam what he wanted to know. He said quietly, "There are 4 other bottles just like this one on the plane. What is it and can we neutralize it?"

I sat very still for a several seconds trying to get my terrified brain thinking of a solution that didn't involve lots of dead people, me included. I reached over and slowly picked up the bottle, and then the answer dawned on me, "Well first I don't think there's anything actually in it. We weren't' scheduled to start filling them for another few weeks. And I would know if any were actually filled because I have the only key to the filling system."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked in a cold voice, "I don't want lots of dead people because you forgot a small test run or someone snuck a few past you."

"Absolutely!" I said suddenly very sure of myself. I explained, "I was so shocked by seeing that super secret bottle, I focused on it, not the fact that we've not actually mixed a useable amount of the toxin since our last small test run several months ago, and we used, or destroyed all of the test run. That bottle and any like it are empty."

"You're sure? I don't want to turn several million square miles of ocean into a dead zone if one of those bottles breaks on impact."

I reached over and before any of them could stop me, twisted the top off the bottle. Well, it wasn't exactly a production cap that would have actually been used to seal the bottle if it had contained the toxin, just a plastic cap used to protect the threads for the actual seal, but they didn't know that, and as a result I had my second good practical joke of the evening – watching the horrified looks on their faces – slowly relax - as they realized I'd gotten them again – and they weren't going to die.

I grinned. Good. They all deserved a good scare. I was almost even for the 20 years of staring in my own porno movies – they had so deviously taken – and so enjoyed tell me about over the last few minutes.

"SHIT!" Bill swore with real feeling and I looked over at him. He was looking down at his crotch. I followed his gaze and saw the unmistakable wet circle of him having peed in his pants.

I laughed, and couldn't stop laughing, and the rest of them- except Bill - started laughing until we were out of breath. Watching us laughing, Bill finally managed a wan smile acknowledging the humor of the situation.

When we finally stopped laughing, Sam stood up, effectively ending the meeting, and walked into the second bedroom, while dialing a number on his cell phone, and closed the door.

Max took pity on Bill and gave him an extra pair of pants he had hanging in the closet, and Bill escaped into the bathroom to clean up and change.

Adam refolded all the papers and stuffed them, along with the sample bottles, back into the bags and set them by the door. Then we sat and waited for Sam to emerge from the bedroom.

Five minutes later Sam emerged from the bedroom, looked at me and said, "Thanks for your help Joe. I'm really sorry you had to find out about the films, but I want you to know the only people who know about them are in this room. And just in case you're not sure what happens next, Max will be staying here to deal with the change in ownership and to watch after you."

Before I could say anything, Bill reappeared in wearing Max's crisply pressed pants, and Sam continued, "All right let's go." He motioned for Adam to get the bags and waived both Adam and Bill through the door ahead of him, then, in the doorway he turned to Max who was still sitting at the table, "Max, he's all yours. You take good care of him," then he turned and let the door close behind him.

I glanced at my watch; the "meeting" had taken exactly 17 minutes. I looked over at Max, "Now what?" I asked.

"We're going to take a shower together and then I'm going to fuck you," he said getting up. He reached over, took my hand, pulled me to my feet, and led me to the shower.