Fomenting a Coup

Like Mabele wasn't, Nick thought.

* * * *

"You are new here," the general said, leaning over the bar and touching Nick's forearm, as the young man stood just across the bar top from Diako, polishing a glass. It was a lame pickup line, but Nick wasn't going to make the general have to work at picking him up.

"I was a gap-year adventure in travel and this is as far as my money got me." This was true, but, oh what a change of course his life took from Monaco, where his money had first given out. Now he was doing his best just to survive. "When I've made some more, I'll go on. I was headed toward Cape Town."

"There are some wild times to be had in Cape Town," Diako said, giving Nick a sharp look, testing on where that could go. Nick had been meeting his steady gaze since Diako had come in. The general had moved to the bar when he'd shown interest and seen the young man return it. Diako was a big, muscular black man. That seemed to be a requisite to rising to the general ranks and staying there for any length of time in this central African country that was as close to a fittest-take-all civilization edge as anywhere in the world.

"I've heard it has strong men as well," Nick said, moving the next step into this dance.

"You prefer men?"

"Yes," Nick answered, giving the general a level look. "Strong ones; African ones."

"We have strong men right here," Diako said, his eyes, again, piercing Nick's. He had been touching Nick's forearm with his fingers. Now he closed his hand on the arm and squeezed. Nick winced, showing it in his eyes—not just the pain, but willing himself to show arousal as well. Diako had a reputation for roughness. The young man didn't move his arm away, though.

"So I've learned," he said.

"You know this isn't the first time I've seen you in here before," Diako said.

"I don't think so. I don't think I saw you here before. You are a man I'd remember."

"Fondly?" Diako said, and smiled.

"I don't think 'fondly' is a word I'd use for it. More dangerous . . . and interesting."

"Interesting? You like strong, dangerous, demanding men?" the general asked.

"Yes."

"I had you checked out. You've been in General Mabele's house."

"Yes."

"And in his bed."

"Yes."

"Why aren't you there now?"

The moment had come. "He isn't satisfying enough."

"Not satisfying. I understood his has the biggest cock in the land."

"It isn't just size," Nick said, going for broke. "It's what you do with it. Satisfaction comes from what it can do—sometimes how cruelly it can be used."

"I can be cruel," Diako said, squeezing Nick's forearm harder.

"So I've heard. I've check you out too, General Diako." They hadn't exchanged names to that point.

"Then you know what I like? That I like young American blonds? How old are you?"

"I'm nineteen."

"Perfect. You know that I like young American blonds and that I like to use them hard?"

"Yes, so I've heard."

"And you would—?"

"I think you need to talk with someone," Nick said, gesturing over toward a table in a shadowed corner. Doug Taney was sitting at the table, an empty chair pulled away from the table beside him. He was closely watching Nick and the general talking and his hand was positioned to invite the chair next to him to be occupied.

"Is he your pimp?" Diako asked. "Isn't he from the American embassy? I believe he's a spy."

"If you want me, you'll go talk with him about what he wants. He tells me that he wants what you want as well—to move up in power here."

"And if I talk to the man over there and he says I can have you?"

"Then you can have me."

"Any way I want you?"

"Any way you want me."

Diako went and talked to Taney. When he came back to the bar, he was smiling. He didn't belly up to the customer side of the bar. He came around to the narrow space behind. Seeing the evil lust in the man's eyes, Nick backed up, but Diako lashed out, surprising Nick with a punch to the cheek and then one to the belly that made Nick go down in a heap. The general was on top of him in an instant, pulling off Nick's trousers and briefs and unzipping his own fly. Nick was still dazed, as he lay under the African general, who had an arm under the young man's waist, raising Nick's pelvis, his buttocks rolled up, for cruel, raw, unprepared, stretching and pumping of the brutal general's cock. Nick moaned from behind the bar as the general's buttocks rose and fell in long, taking thrusts. Slowly recovering, Nick dug his fingernails in the black bull's buttocks and rocked with the fuck.

Taney remained seated across the room. The deal had been struck.

* * * *

General Diako was so ecstatic about the success of the coup that made him president in the central African country that he didn't notice for days afterward that Nick was no longer there. When he did notice, he was so busy dealing with other coup attempts that he just let the young man's absence pass him by.

On the private plane heading out of Africa with Nick and Doug Taney aboard, Taney came out of the forward compartment, where a meeting had been going on, to the middle compartment, where sixteen plush seats, four across, split by the aisle, and four rows deep, were located and sat down beside Nick, who was all alone in the compartment. He placed a possessive hand on Nick's knee.

Doug Taney wasn't really Doug Taney. He was Sam Winterberry, chief of the CIA's Candy Story unit, which used young women and men, like Nick, for special operations that entailed the use of sex. Usually the agents they used were recruited—sometimes voluntarily, more often through blackmail—and trained for the work. The Africa coup operation had been on a short string. Sam had had to go to a brothel for his "talent."

"You did very well back there, Nick."

"Thanks . . . I guess," Nick replied.

"But we have a problem."

"I wouldn't tell," Nick said. "Just get me back to the States and let me go back to my life. I plan to enter college in September."

"It's not really that simple. I think you can understand that. You've been through a lot. It's something we can't let go public."

Nick didn't say anything. He turned his face toward the window of the aircraft flying high above the water now. He was trembling. He couldn't help it. He was close to tears, as well. "Are you going to kill me?" he managed to gather the nerve to say.

"That's what the meeting was about up front," Winterberry said. "That seems the most prudent option, but I was impressed by your talents—talents we need in my office and we don't have enough of for the moment."

"Which is why you bought me and gave me to monsters who might have killed me at any moment."

"Work with me here, Nick. You aren't in the best position. You could have been bought by one of those Arabs in that Moroccan brothel. Do you think you'd be alive now if you had been? I think you are practical and are a survivor—and I think you enjoyed most of what happened to you. We've decided to give you a choice."

"A choice?"

"I'll be honest with you. We're over water at thirty-seven-thousand feet. That choice would not be painful for you very long, and it would be assuring for us."

"Or?" This option hadn't lessened Nick's trembling.

"You can come to work for me. We'll pay for your college, which you'd have to fit in around assignments, but you'd be locked into taking the assignments I give you. And I would claim total loyalty and cooperation or we'd invoke the other option."

"Total loyalty and cooperation?"

"Yes, which would be sealed by a visit to the aft compartment." The aft compartment in the plane was a bedroom. Winterberry stood and extended a hand to Nick. "Shall we?"

Nick stood and followed Winterberry into the aft compartment, and thus his formal work for the CIA Candy Store unit began.