My Only Talent Ch. 47

"I am serous about Chrissy. You treat her right, Clancy, or we will be enemies for life." I hoped she was smart enough to leave Big Bones on the ash heap of time past.

"Ok, man, I get it! She is different. Like nobody I ever met." After they hung up, it struck Big Bones that Robbie had just called him Clancy. Even Kevin didn't know that name. WTF?

............

The agency psychiatrist had bad news for Ambassador Pliskin.

"You were right to be concerned. He is deteriorating rapidly, and it is definitely the mission."

The psychiatrist did not know the identity of Steven's 'subject', but he knew the basic nature of the assignment and Steven's role.

"His basic sexual identify is tied to his military training and attitude -- never submit. But his assigned duty is to be totally submissive to the subject of his mission. He is subconsciously trying to reconcile the two -- by falling in love with his subject. Objectively, he knows he can never actually have her, so it is literally eating his soul every time he is with her. She is just the type of woman he has been searching for all his life and could fall in love with, but could never be submissive to, except his duty is be submissive, and he must do his duty. At each of their meetings, she apparently ramps up the intensity and intimacy of their relationship, and the depth of his submission. He could suffer a break at any moment. It is not safe for him or the subject. You must terminate this mission ASAP, and we have to figure out how to rehab him, or the damage will be permanent! And I have no way to gauge what damage could be done to the woman, whoever she is."

Ambassador Pliskin knew he had to find a way to help Steven, and also Suzanne. He had abused his power in assigning Steven in the first place but had rationalized it, as being necessary. He could think of ways to shut it down in a way that would be believable to Suzanne, but would she get worse and then repeat the whole sordid pattern? And how could they fix Steven? He knew he had a duty to restore him as much as possible.

He focused on the shrink. "I can terminate the operation, but before I do, I want to hear your best plan to fix Steven, no matter what it takes. By the end of the week, please."

He called Alexander Walton in for another talk, about Suzanne and the problems she continued to create. Alexander was already familiar with much of the story, but even he would be shocked at Steven's mission and the latest turn it had taken. Hopefully, he would have some ideas.

Alexander was stunned by what the Ambassador told him. The Ambassador knew all about Suzanne's play for Alexander, and his refusal. He recognized the risks Suzanne posed. He had tried to deal with it in a unique way, a method available only to someone with the Ambassador's immense power and influence. But that turned out not to be a solution, rather a ticking time bomb about blow up in all their faces. And Pliskin wanted his suggestions on how to proceed tomorrow! Maybe this job wasn't so great after all. There was some stuff you wished you didn't know!

............

Without classes to attend, I had a lot more time on my hands in Cambridge. Nora was gone at school all day, and sometimes after dinner meetings with study groups and project teams. I setup my own 'classes' to get up to speed on all the background info Rock Tappert had sent me. The great dinners and almost nightly great sex had me sleeping like a baby, and my mind was clear and I could concentrate fully. My chief problem was that I had no TA with office hours to help me with my initial questions about stuff I did not grok right away. I finally remembered that one of the post docs seemed just like my helpful Moroccan TA, and I emailed him to see if he could give me some time. He did have office hours for a small graduate school 'great papers' class and encouraged me to come. It helped me work through stuff and made him see that I was serious about learning the tech and helping the project move forward.

I also contacted the other FUCKEM Associates portfolio companies the VC had suggested and found them helpful and receptive too. I had a draft of what a real validation demo would look and measure like. I would start by running this by the post docs to see how feasible it was.

I also re-upped my running schedule, but it was harder to find places to run near Nora's apartment than it had been in Austin. I emailed Saskia for suggestions, and she was doing fine, still in love with her own postdoc admirer, and loving life without Arturia Brown as her boss. She suggested rowing as an exercise regimen up here and/or a bicycle and wished me well on my upcoming nuptials.

I knew a rowing expert but felt guilty about calling Gunther. But he returned my call right away and sounded very happy to hear from me.

"Robbie, I hope are doing well. Strelsa and I are doing better than ever. It took me six months to work up the courage to try again, but zee did the 'swap meet' with another couple, and I was fine, no problems this time. The other woman wasn't as beautiful as Suzanne, and Strelsa didn't like the guy as much as she liked you, but we all had zee great sex anyvay!" He laughed deeply. "I banged the other woman hard for a long time, and she was very happy with me. I have my self-confidence back! How are you doing?"

I explained to him that Suzanne and I were not together anymore, and she was now married to someone else, and that I was about to be married too. He sympathized.

"The reason I called, Gunter, was about rowing. I am going to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts until September. I spoke to my old trainer Saskia Grandael, and she suggested I take up rowing to stay in shape. I thought I would ask you a good place to try up here."

He laughed. "Was Saskia really training you personally, Robbie? There are Olympic athletes that can't get any time with her."

"Yes, Suzanne knew her, and I was in one of her exercise research studies and we became good friends. I introduced her to someone that hired her for her new job with Bob the Knob. We have even been to a physiology seminar together. Saskia is wonderful!"

"You know Bob the Knob, too?"

"Well just to say hi. Asa Weltschmerz introduced us. But Saskia thinks he is a genius!"

"He is. Well I owe you one Robbie, both for how nice you and Suzanne were to us, and your help in recruiting. You told me Muffy was confused and felt off to you, and we recruited two other big prospects instead. Muffy went to Princeton and then dropped out in one semester. My other prospects are still solid contributors. So, Robbie, tell me, are you in good shape, and do you want to really work hard?"

"Yes, I have several hours a day available up here and would like to train hard. Suzanne got me to run my first marathon, and Saskia built up my upper body pretty well, but I think my legs and upper body endurance could be improved."

"Do I have your permission to ask Saskia about your progress, and share what she tells me with a coaching friend up there?"

"Of course! Any and all of my records, too."

"Okay, I'll be in touch"

............

From their fourth date forward, Krissy was amazed. Goodbye sorority house, next semester she was moving into an apartment with her own bedroom. Roger and Khalan were absolutely rocking her world. They moved around like acrobats and found just the right places to touch her. Khalan had explained to her why hip flexibility and fluidity was so important for a defensive back, but Krissy found it just the thing for enhanced penetration, too. Roger, for his part, brought new definition to the idea of a thick dick. He seemed to expand substantially after he was inside her and thus hit just the right spots. Either of them alone or the two of them together sent her into never never land every time, and they were so sweet to her. Every time she was with them, she learned they were really smart and nice. Her early instincts had been correct. Maybe she did not need three of four guys. Maybe two energetic and giving guys were all she would ever need.

They ate her shamelessly and well. She gave them both head like there was no tomorrow, and she loved how excited and satisfied they got. They even got comfortable with watching each other come in her mouth, and that turned her on like throwing a light switch! When they did that spit roasting thing, she just about passed out and came like firecrackers popping every time.

When they whispered to her that they were ready to invite Joyce, too, she knew she had found the right guys for her! What starts here changes the world, baby!

............

He had been working with the agency for thirty years, but he had never been stumped before. One of the world's best at his psychiatric profession and the highest security clearance known to man, and he felt trapped. He didn't really know enough about Steven Byers and his background to feel confident about how to repair the damage his latest mission had caused, but he had to come up with something. His deadline was fast approaching, and Ambassador Pliskin was one fellow you never wanted to disappoint.

Wait a minute! What about that email from the pushy rehab therapist? Could her 'sexually charged techniques' also be used to repair sexual damage? He had only read the summary. He had two days to find out. First step was to get her in here for a talk!

............

Gunther hooked me up with an assistant rowing coach guy at Harvard, Atlas Cranio, who turned out to be from Kent, and who invited me over to tour their facility. "Gunther told me you were a good friend and supporter of the team at ESU. Did you really go to high school with Strelsa?"

"Yes, she was an exchange student for a year."

"Wow. She is the smartest and hottest wife of any rowing coach in the world. We all talk about how lucky Gunther is!"

"She is a wonderful young lady, and I am proud to call her my friend."

"Too right! Gunter told me you did okay with Saskia, so I am going to give you the entry testing we do with our competitive rowing teams. If you pass that screen, I will give you a personal training program to work. If you are in shape and work hard individually, in six weeks we might let you sit with a beginning boat team, if we need a slot filled. It's sort of like the practice squad in football. But most of the time you will work on the machines and do drills and work the other training regimes. I also expect you to come to meets and maybe help with recruiting visits if we need you. "

The machine they hooked me up to looked like the treadmill contraption that Saskia and Duke Knorr had used on me, except it was a rowing machine with even more leads and sensors, plus three video cameras, and instead of increasing the tilt, they just turned up the resistance and had me try to keep the same pace, set by a little electronic metronome. I was determined to make it to the end of the test, and I did, but I almost passed out. They were not expecting me to finish at all. I was in! Afterwards, I sat on the bench outside for thirty minutes trying to catch my breath. What have I gotten myself into?

............

Carmencita had two hours' notice of her command performance with the agency super shrink to go over her plan. At least he was giving her lunch while they talked. When he laid out his problem with treating sexual damage to an extremely high value operative, she was struck by two things. One, how well it was suited to her techniques. Two, how eerily it paralleled the challenges she had been dealing with personally, and she heard the old tune about 'synchronicity' playing in her head.

But she was also scared to death. Tomorrow morning, she had to present her plan to respond to the problem not only to the shrink, but to Ambassador Pliskin, her husband's boss, plus another NSA guy. She responded to stress by getting cool and driven, and she laid out all the logical conclusions she had already reached that validated her approach. But she needed to know more about the actors in this little play to be sure.

............

Alexander Walton had a problem. His dual loyalties were colliding, and they should be orthogonal. He was supposed to keep the Ambassador's confidences, but he also had to be truthful to his wife. He had revealed to Carmencita everything about what transpired with him and Suzanne, but she knew nothing about Steven Byers and what he was up to with Suzanne. She also knew nothing about Robbie Roberts and his complex relationship with Suzanne. She knew that Suzanne had an old boyfriend in Austin, but not who he was and certainly not all the gritty details about their relationship that the Ambassador had supplied. Even if she knew all about it, how could she fix this major snafu? Alexander also had a duty to the Ambassador to help him, so solving this problem was imperative.

He decided to trust Carmencita completely. She was the only person in the world he had total and complete faith in. He swore her to double secret impenetrable secrecy, and then related everything he knew about their problem. The expression on her face grew more incredulous with every word. When he finished, she shook her head, and said "Holy Fucking Shit" twice, the first time he had ever heard her use profanity.

Then she laughed. "Alexander, the world is at the same time more perverse and more wonderful than I ever knew!"

Had she lost her mind?

"This actually makes it easier to fix things, not harder!"

"You are going to have to walk me through that one, Carm!"

She did. She stated it in words, but he formed a symbolic logic diagram in his head, and he followed her reasoning.

"It's like a sudoku puzzle, Alexander, only its dominance and submission relationships, not arithmetic, that leads us to a solution! Suzanne can only trust and love someone who can dominate her. She tests men to see if she can dominate them, but she wants them to turn the tables, and dominate her. That is the only way she can feel like she is attractive and loved, that she is worth the effort to dominate. This Robbie fellow must have let her dominate him at one point, maybe because he thought it would please her, but then she did not believe he really loved her. Mike, despite his injury, never submitted, and she perceived his love was true. The irony is that if he had not been injured, he might have tried submitting to her too, and lost her."

"Okay, so that's why she stayed with Mike?"

"And will forever, now. But she feels tremendous guilt about Robbie. She knows she broke his heart, and she knows it was for totally selfish reasons of her own. She never should have told him she loved him, and if she had been honest and told him she was never going to be with anybody but Mike long term, he might have handled her differently. Do you see why she couldn't resist you in that hospital room?"

"Not exactly."

"You were the kind of man she wanted, smart, strong, and decisive! She truly felt grateful, you had saved Robbie's life right before her eyes, and you were physically unable to resist her. She was turned on by you, and she wanted you, and she could take you just the way she wanted! She could not resist that temptation."

"Sounds like you almost sympathize with her! I thought you wanted her dead?"

"I understand her now. I don't want her dead, but I do want her punished, and very severely. It turns out that is also the best thing to do for her, and for you, and for Steven, for Robbie, and in the end for Mike, too!"

"Okay, now you lost me again."

"She is basically morally sound. But her sexual needs, exacerbated by her loss of Mike's and then Robbie's affection, made her do some things that she is now carrying a lot of guilt about. We must purge that guilt. That is the only way she can forgive herself. To do that she must be punished, and then forgiven.

"By whom??"

"The order is important too! By Robbie, you, Steven, herself, and then Mike, and finally, her father. Her father is the standard she judges everything by. And she must get forgiveness from me, also. Do you understand why she came after you in the White House?"

"Not really, but the Ambassador knew all about it. If I had succumbed, he would have sacked me."

Carmencita laughed. "See! Tough standards. I might have sacked you, too! But you did the right thing. That was a terrible offer Suzanne made, especially since she knew you were newly married, and threatening to sour your relationship with her father was beyond the pale. Almost unforgivable. "

"Almost?"

"She was desperate. No affection from Mike, no more Robbie, all the guilt, and her very considerable sexual needs were festering and multiplying. She had dominated you, and she offered to do it again, and that turned you on, and appealed to your unique set of kinks. We will talk about all that after we get through this crisis. But what she really wanted, subconsciously, was for you to jump up and top her! That would prove you found her too attractive to resist, that you really were the kind of man she should respect, and that she was, in her own weird way, worthy of being loved by you!"

"She knows deep down that what she tried to do to our marriage, and thus me, is very wrong. If someone tried to do that to her, she would never rest until she had scratched their eyes out. So, we must punish her so severely that she really believes she has paid the price and her guilt had been purged, and then each of us must forgive her. All this is greatly complicated by the fact that the act of punishment and domination is an incredibly sexual experience for her."

"My head is spinning, but I see the logic. So, how do we accomplish all this? All this punishment will turn her on?"

"Some will. Early in the process it will have to be only fear, humiliation, and shame, the strongest she has ever felt. I will do to her what I do to you when you are up in the straps and begging for release, but with pain and humiliation, not sexual tension, although for her they are mixed. Her only release will be in complete surrender and despair. Then I can forgive her. But that's just the first step. The next part is more difficult, and risky. I'm worried about that."

"How do we fix Steven?"

"That's the easy part! He will be ordered to do what she needs, and that will remove, in his mind, the submission that was the root of his problem. He will get back on top, while doing his duty, with great enthusiasm. Getting you and Robbie to be harsh enough will be a challenge, plus finding a way to make me be as cruel to her as I need to be!"

"I can help with that! Think of it like setting a dislocated shoulder. The patient feels intense pain for a second, but then is better for a long time."

"That helps me know I must do it, but not how to do it."

"My training might help. We sometimes must do quick and dirty interrogations in the field. To break down a female subject completely, you force yourself on them sexually, or make them think you have, and if the interrogator is also female, she ties them down naked and pisses on them! Total humiliation in almost all cultures. "

Carmencita's eyes lit up. "That's perfect! That will work."

"Wow, maybe you do want to kill her? Or at least a heavy dose of Schadenfreude?"

"Nope. I just want to get the job done. You are the one that got us both called up to the major leagues, slugger! I'm just trying to get a few hits off the pitching up here. Now let's figure out how to get the Ambassador fully on board. He is going to be in complete parental culture shock when we spring this on him and then even after he agrees, he will have to pull a lot of logistical strings to make this happen!"

They spent the next three hours practicing for tomorrow's meeting. Alexander was at first scared to death by her plan, but he tried to focus and anticipate the Ambassador's reactions, and they built up their arguments to convince him.