Flight from Brazil

Those little contractions kept getting closer together and tighter, and it was soon becoming hard to not just let go. The other thing that was making that difficult was Felicia was starting to writhe around under me and she was making continuous little moans. I was at that point where I was going to lose control when Felicia jerked, then jerked again, then cried out and pushed herself up and into my stroke. She hung there for a second, then cried out again and her thighs started to shake.

That was more than I could take. I groaned as my cock erupted with the first spurt, then gasped as a second and third flew out the tip and inside Felicia. After that, I just kept stroking and enjoyed the feeling of her quaking body massaging my cock.

When my cock slipped out of her, Felicia pulled me down on top of her and kissed me until I had to stop so I could breathe. She hugged me tight against her breasts, and then whispered, "I think I'll sleep with you tonight if that's OK."

}|{

Felicia was a different woman for a week after that, different enough I forgot all about making her explain to me who she was and why she'd done what she did.

I'd wake up to her stroking my chest. Some days we'd make love and then go out for breakfast. Some days we'd just spend an hour with a lot of kissing and touching and then go out for breakfast. After breakfast, I'd work a little on my novel while Felicia went into one of the other bedrooms and made a phone call.

We didn't do any sightseeing. Felicia said it was best to not tempt fate. Instead, we spent the afternoons watching television. I couldn't understand what was being said, but I could follow along after Felicia showed me there were English subtitles.

In the evening, we'd have dinner and then go back to our apartment. Evenings always meant Felicia enticing me into bed for sex, not that she had to work very hard to do that. Once she took off her clothes, I didn't need any enticing at all.

We'd been in the apartment for ten days when the old Felicia came back. After her morning phone call, she came out of the bedroom with a sad look on her face.

"You have a flight out of Bolivia at one-thirty this afternoon and you'll be in Chicago a little before midnight. It's already paid for so all you have to do is check in. I'll have a driver take us to the airport, but I won't go in with you. You're safe now so I don't need to."

I understood why Felicia looked sad. As soon as she told me, I was sad too. I'd spent ten days with a woman I never dreamed could exist, and now I was going to leave her and never see her again.

Felicia didn't say anything on the ride to the airport. Once the driver pulled up to the curb, she asked for the passport, credit card, and other identification I'd been using, and when I gave it to her, she handed me the valid ones. We got out of the car and Felicia took my hand.

"I guess this is good-bye. I have a job to do and you have a novel to write. When it comes out, I'll be sure to buy a copy."

I said I'd send her a copy if she'd give me her address, but Felicia shook her head.

"If I give you my address, chances are I'll be someplace else when your book comes out. It's probably better this way. We're too far apart in lot of ways to keep in touch."

With that, Felicia kissed me on the cheek and then got back into the Mercedes.

}|{

The flight was almost twelve hours, so I had a lot of time to think. It looked to me like Felicia had tears in her eyes after she kissed me on the cheek. Maybe she felt more for me than I'd thought. Maybe I just wanted to think she did. I knew I felt a lot for her. I felt enough I started making plans to go back to Sao Paulo and find her. I'd go back to Chicago, write my novel, and then fly back down and start looking.

It dawned on me then that I didn't know anything about Felicia. She'd never told me where she worked or what she did or why she'd helped me. I didn't even know if she lived in Sao Paulo or not.

Then I started trying to be logical. Felicia didn't tell me all of that because she couldn't. She obviously worked for some intelligence department in the Brazilian government and what she did was a secret. That had to be the explanation. The only way she'd have been able to find out as much about me as she had was if she was involved in the government somehow. Everything we'd done over the past week was just part of the job for her. She was making sure I didn't try to get out of South America until she was sure it was safe.

By the time I landed in Chicago, I was pissed at Felicia for tricking me and pissed at myself for being so gullible. I'd let myself get close to her when I should have been looking at the facts of what had happened instead of enjoying all the sex and attention she'd given me.

I also felt really depressed. Yes, I had gotten close to her, so close I'd started planning on finding her again. When I found her, I planned to tell her I couldn't leave her again, no matter what. Now...well, that probably was never going to happen. The only woman I'd ever felt that much for was gone from my life forever.

}|{

Over the next six months, I wrote my novel, but I changed the plot a lot. My midshipman ended up being Lieutenant William Daniels, and by using his connection to General Basil Duke, Lieutenant Daniels had stolen a little over a hundred thousand dollars of the Confederate Treasury before it was loaded on the train in Richmond.

Posing as a Confederate Supply Sergeant and by using a wagon with a false floor, he transported the gold and coins to Norfolk and hired a blockade runner to ferry himself and the hoard to Cuba where he put it into a Cuban Bank. He remained in Cuba until Lee surrendered and then took a boat to Florida where he put together a rag-tag group of Confederate deserters and attacked the Union wagon train transporting the confiscated Richmond Bank funds back to the North. That raid gave him another hundred and seventy-nine thousand dollars which he also transported to the Cuban bank.

He used a former blockade-runner's ship to transport the money from Cuba to Brazil and then set up his bank. My novel ended with Daniels helping ex-Confederates emigrate to Brazil for the purpose of using slave labor to again gain wealth. He became the banker for the colony, and after several Brazilian politicians who opposed slavery disappeared, he became the lead politician for the state of Sao Paulo.

}|{

The book was published on the second of March, and was doing well enough I did a few book signings. It was at one of these book signings my cell phone beeped. I was in the middle of signing books for a line of people, so I didn't check the text message until I got home that night.

The message was short.

"I'm in Chicago and coming for my book. See you tonight at your apartment. Felicia."

All those emotions I'd put into the back of my mind after my trip back from Bolivia came boiling to the surface. I couldn't figure out why, after seven months, she'd decided to see me again. I was sure it wasn't just to get a copy of my book. It had to be something else, and for a minute or so, I let my mind think maybe she was coming to tell me she needed me in her life. That was impossible though. If she hadn't known that when I left for the US, she surely wouldn't have changed, and if she knew it then, she'd have told me then.

I didn't know whether to stay in my apartment and wait or to go somewhere else to avoid meeting her again. I was afraid if I met her she'd just leave me again and I'd be depressed for weeks. I was afraid if I didn't meet her and she really wanted me in her life, she'd decide I didn't want her, leave and never make contact with me again. I finally decided meeting her was the only way to clear things up once and for all.

}|{

It was almost nine when I heard a soft knock on my door. When I opened it, there stood Felicia with a smile on her face.

"Can I come in or do you hate me for what I did to you?"

She was standing there with her coat open enough I could see she was wearing the same blue dress she'd worn when we got to Bolivia. There was no way I could tell her no.

After she took off her coat and tossed it on a chair, she sat down on my couch.

"You're probably wondering why I waited all this time before contacting you again, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I'm also wondering how you got past security at the desk downstairs."

Felicia smiled and held up a key.

"When you gave me your keys in Bolivia, I had the driver make a key to your apartment. I thought I might need it some day, and as it turns out, I did. The guard asked me who I was, so I gave him my name and told him I'd moved in that morning. He didn't have my name on his list, but he said sometimes it takes a day or so and since I had a key, he'd let me go on."

I could imagine Harry doing that. Harry is a good security guard, but he has a weak spot where beautiful women are concerned. All Felicia would have had to do was show him her key and bat her eyes a couple of times and he'd have let her go anywhere she wanted.

"OK, so why are you here?"

Felicia patted the couch beside her.

"Come sit down and I'll tell you everything I couldn't tell you before."

When I sat down, Felicia picked up my right hand and held it in her lap.

"First of all, my name isn't Felicia Mendez. It's Annette Mendoza and I'm originally from Indianapolis. Felicia Mendez was the name I used when I worked for the CIA in Brazil so I wouldn't endanger my family. The CIA put together a set of records of my life in Brazil so it looked like I was a native. Since my father is Brazilian and taught me to speak Portuguese, nobody suspected anything.

"The reason I was there was to help the Brazilian Intelligence Services. The government of Brazil had been trying to arrest the members of the Daniels family for years, but the family just made an offer to any of the people investigating them that the people couldn't refuse. The Brazilian President contacted the US State Department and asked for help. I ended up being that help.

"I was investigating the Daniels family because since they arrived in Sao Paulo, they've been involved in the politics of Brazil including several coups that changed the government. It didn't matter which side of the politics the ousted government favored. It only mattered that the Daniels family got what they wanted, and for over a hundred years they did.

"They delayed the outlawing of slavery for almost fifteen years, and even after that, their connections with the government in Sao Paulo let them use their native workers as if they were slaves. They still do that. Their employees aren't paid the Brazilian minimum wage and they can be fired for even asking the wrong question. A few who have been very vocal have just vanished.

"Once the Daniels family had built a network of government employees they paid to do what was best for the Daniels family business, there was no stopping them. Any investigation was either just stopped or produced evidence they were innocent of anything. The last straw for the current President of Brazil was when Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo won a contract for new armored personnel carriers for the Brazilian Army.

"The price per unit was almost three times the price of the previous contract. The President asked the Army why the price was so high, and the answer he got was that instead of four companies bidding, Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo was the only company to bid. The President knew that wasn't right and couldn't trust his own departments to find out what happened. I got assigned to find out and report to him.

"My sources told me that Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo hinted that the health and safety of the chief officers of the other companies and their families would be in danger if they submitted a bid. The other companies knew of other cases where Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo had carried out such threats, so they didn't submit bids.

"We were putting together a case against Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo and the Daniels family when you decided to investigate them. I found out about you when you went to Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo and asked to see the manager. We had surveillance cameras hidden in the adjacent buildings and photographed everyone who went in and came out. You were a strange face, but with our facial recognition software we matched our pictures with your Illinois Driver's License photo. After that, it was easy to find out the rest.

"I didn't know who you were working for, but if you were looking into the Daniels family, you could expose our whole operation. When I found out you were a writer, I knew that not only could you really screw things up, but you were in some serious danger. That's why I followed your cab to the Daniels home and why I got you out of Brazil. The Daniels family knew we were investigating them and they'd stop at nothing to end the investigation. You were just an innocent writer but they'd have killed you just because you were out there looking.

"You didn't read or hear about anything happening in Brazil over the last seven months because it was an embarrassment to the Brazilian President and the government never made any of it public information.

A week after we got to Bolivia, a special unit of the Brazilian military the President trusted raided Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo and the Daniels home and took most of the Daniels family into custody.

"They found enough documentation about the activities of the Daniels family over the years to put them in prison for the rest of their lives. The trials were held in secret and all the family members associated in any way with Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo were convicted of bribery or murder for hire or both. All the men who were employed by the Daniels family as security were convicted as well on multiple counts including murder and threatening witnesses.

"Since Brazil does not implement the death penalty except during time of war, all were sentenced to the maximum of thirty years in prison. It is likely many of them will die there, either because of old age or because there are people in the prisons who have run afoul of the Daniels family in the past. One, a former security guard, was stabbed to death in the prison shower a week ago by the brother of a man he'd killed. There will be others.

"The Brazilian government also confiscated all the assets of Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo and of the Daniels family. Without money, they have no way to bribe their way out of prison. If they don't die there, they'll be so old and poor when they get out they won't be a threat to anyone.

I had heard what she said, but I wasn't really listening. I was still wondering why she'd decided to come to Chicago to tell me.

"So, you came all the way to Chicago just to tell me all this?"

She looked at my hand in her lap.

"No. I came to tell you that...well, you probably won't believe me, but I missed you and I wanted to see you again. Now that all that is over, I've left Brazil and though I still work for the CIA, on paper I work in the records department for US Customs at O'hare. There are a lot of drugs and human traffic victims coming into the US through O'hare and the FBI and DEA don't have any authority to operate outside the US. The CIA does, so I gather information about the drug and human traffic from people we arrest and forward it to Langley. I've been here for almost two months. It took me that long to get the courage to come see you. I sort of dumped you in Bolivia and I thought you would probably be mad at me. I'm hoping you aren't."

}|{

Well, that night we both showed each other how we really felt about each other. The next morning, we showed each other again. It's become a regular thing about three nights a week.

We don't live together, at least not technically. Annette still has to maintain the front of being single and working for US Customs. As far as anyone at US Customs knows, we're just dating. We meet at one apartment or the other every night though. Sometimes I still forget and call her Felicia because when we're in bed together, that's who she is. She doesn't seem to mind.

She's going to submit her resignation to her CIA boss in a month but continue to work at US Customs. She likes the work and it's a lot safer than being a CIA field agent. I'm hoping she'll marry me once she changes jobs.

I've started on another novel, but this one is different. In the past, all my novels have been based on historical accounts. This one will take place in modern times and will be about an Army Captain in Iraq who falls in love with an Arab woman. She's really...well, you can probably figure where the story is going. It will be in how it gets there that makes it interesting. I spent a year in Iraq so I know a lot about the country and the people. I have one excellent resource who can tell me about how a woman feels when she has two conflicting goals, and she's more than happy to share it with me.