The First Deadly Sin

I thought, "What kind of seven-year-old calls a boat a vessel??"

I said, "This is my associate Kelly McMahan."

Kelly and Chelsea were already sizing each other up. That's because women are cats. Chelsea was clearly the smarter of the two. But then again, there are very few people outside of DARPA and CERN who are as smart as Chelsea Hughes-Meissner.

On the other hand, when it came to overall worldliness and practical street smarts, Kelly was clearly the alpha female. Plus, Kelly was armed.

I would later bear witness to the fact that Chelsea Hughes-Meissner could literally alter your world as you know it. But for the time being, I simply settled into the luxurious upper lounge of the Cantius It's about 50 miles between Fort-de-France and Rodney Bay, on the island of St. Lucia. We made the trip in under three hours.

Their estate was a sight to behold. We were picked up by a creole character. He was their driver and he never stopped talking. He was some kind of French, English-speaking Rastaman, driving a 1953 Plymouth, which looked like it had just rolled off the assembly line.

The estate itself reeked of eight figures. And that was just the grounds and house. The staff probably added another couple of hundred thousand a year.

They put Kelly and me in a single room that had a great view overlooking the Atlantic. It had a couple of king beds. They just assumed.

It seemed too wimpy to worry about sleeping arrangements, given Kelly's hotness factor. So, I didn't ask for a separate room. If I had, they would have probably thought that I was gay, but coexisting with Kelly was going to test my resolve.

That evening, we gathered for dinner on the terrace. That told me that the Hughes-Meissner family was underplaying the reason why we were there. Chelsea's beloved brother was facing a treason charge, yet they were acting like they were entertaining out of town guests.

I would later learn that the Meissner family had that kind of confidence, and I could see why. But, their seeming indifference was disturbing at the time.

Both women were in light tropical print dresses. The little girl was in shorts and a t-shirt. It said, "Gurlz Rule." Meissner and I were in cubaverras, complete with after dinner brandy and Cohibas. The drinks were served by a couple of maids and a butler.

Everything around us was green, and manicured to within an inch of its life. The rest of the scenery was the blue Atlantic. The birds were singing, and the insects were buzzing. It was a delightful hiatus from the traffic noise and bustle of a big city.

We could afford to kick back since McCarthy still thought we were on Martinique. That misdirection play was the reason for the boat-ride. After London's rain and chill, it was wonderful to sit in a topical evening, with the warm breezes and the sultry smells of the lush, verdant landscape.

I couldn't help checking out Chelsea Hughes-Meissner. She was a jewel of a woman, flawless, perfectly arranged facial features and satin skin. But the odd part was her figure, which was lushly hourglass, even though she was perhaps a hundred pounds soaking wet.

Kelly has the same kind of shape, but she is seven inches taller and twenty pounds of delectable muscle heavier. This little woman was faultlessly proportioned, even a bit top-heavy. She was just so small.

I quickly learned that, although she was physically exquisite, Chelsea Hughes-Meissner was something entirely different when she was the Red Dragon. Nonetheless, that revelation had to wait a day.

After dinner, Kelly and I retired to our room. It was the first time we had actually slept together in the same room. She had been oddly restrained all evening. It was like she was thinking about something. When we got in the physical location she said, "Are we sleeping separate, or together?"

I said, "Separate baby, you know what would happen if we were ever in the same bed."

For a change, she didn't have a snarky come-back. She just flashed me an enigmatic look and went into the en-suite.

When she came out she was wearing the outfit that she had been sleeping in all the time that we had been on the road. It was a Bears jersey with the number and name of her current boyfriend on the back. Zak is six-six and two hundred and fifty pounds. So, the jersey was like she was wearing a tent.

She had cut it off about three inches below her panty clad pussy. And, her magnificent, long muscled legs were on full display. She got into the king bed nearest the sliding door to the terrace, and turned her back. All I could see underneath the covers were the scrumptious mounds of her hips and her shapely shoulders. A bountiful pile of copper colored curls lay on the pillow.

It almost seemed like she was softly crying, but I knew that Kelly was way too tough to be doing girl things like that. I was wearing my usual pajama bottoms. I can't find a concomitant top big enough to fit my upper body, so I just sported a wife beater.

I turned off the light and said, "Night!" The darkness enfolded us. There was nothing but silence on the other side of the room.

I awoke sometime in the middle of the night to find that I was holding a big solid tit. It was attached to a naked woman, whose luxurious body was spooned with mine. It was clear that while I'd been sleeping, Kelly had decided to take the bull by the horn; so, to speak.

She had lost her jersey and was now snuggling her round naked buns into me. She had my arm pulled over her like the covers of the bed, and my hand draped across her chest. She actually appeared to be sleeping, even though the nipple was rock hard.

Whatever abstract ideas I had about our partnership evaporated, along with all my inhibitions. Make no mistake about it, Pipe was going to be laid tonight.

My mind went through a million calculations. There was no doubt that I was going to fuck Kelly McMahan. So, for better or for worse, we were committed to the next phase.

Becoming a couple involves implicit assumptions about how you will interact going forward. With all of the inherent variables, the potential for loss can be almost as daunting as the opportunity for happiness. Consequently, I knew I was running a tremendous risk.

It was inevitable that the dynamics of my life with this woman, who I had loved forever, were going to be different. And that difference entailed a lot of new and disturbing emotional factors. I was aware of the danger; even with the imminent prospect of getting my brains fucked out.

It's one thing to fuck a sexy woman. It is something entirely different to involve yourself in the ultimate physical intimacy with the sole person in your life whose loss would be unsustainable. Kelly had been my sounding board, conscience and best friend. That had been for so long that I couldn't imagine life without her. That's what I was facing, but we would deal with that later.

Kelly was either purring loudly, or snoring. I carefully moved my hand down to those delectable lips. Spread her petals and began to twiddle her little-man-in-the-boat. She let out a loud moan. It almost sounded like pure agony. Then she flopped violently over on her back.

I could see in the ambient light that her eyes were wide open and staring at me. She slowly spread her legs wide, offering me access. I moved between those shapely thighs, supporting myself on my arms. Then, I inserted myself into her boiling hot, highly lubricated passage.

She grunted with sensation, threw her arms over her head to grab the rails of the headboard. Her big meaty boobs rose like the birth of a new mountain range. Her hips elevated. Her legs came up and she actually pushed me the rest of the way into her using her heels.

She groaned loudly and said, "My GOD YES!! You have to fuck me. I've been waiting forever!!"

Her sex engulfed me, and we set off in that age-old motion. Her mouth was wide open, and she was breathing like a sprinter. I fastened my lips on hers and our tongues dualized. I realized that this was the first time I had ever kissed her. She moaned over-and-over through the kiss. It was a very long one.

All the time our hips never stopped pistoning into each other. That produced loud wet slapping sounds. She had her legs wrapped around me and her sex was red hot and overflowing. The hormonal smells were driving me nuts.

Kelly is as physically strong as a woman can be, with a rock-hard body and her big soft tits. She was writhing them against me, wrapped up in the sensation of sliding them back and forth lubricated by our sweat.

She was repeating over and over, "What I imagined!! Sooooo Gooood!! Then she made a "Thunk!!" grunting noise deep in her chest. It sounded like somebody had hit her in the solar-plexus. And her sex began a series of rapid, pulses.

I had never experienced such a powerful female coming sensation, even with a woman as hot as Pia. Kelly's eyes flew open in astonishment and she started shouting, "Ahhhh, Ahhhhhhh, Ahhhhhhhhh!!"

Her legs quivered uncontrollably, like she was having an epileptic seizure and she set off wildly thrashing underneath me. It was almost like the sensations were too much for her and she was trying to escape.

I had fucked one of the hottest women on Planet Earth. That was my dead wife Pia. But I had never come across a woman who went off like Kelly. It was like she had blown into smithereens.

Her extreme orgasm set ME off and we had a couple of irrational moments while we both took care of business. I finally had to bail-out of her. Otherwise, my wiring was going to melt down. As I did, I shot in her, on her and over her, on the wall behind us.

Kelly was still flopping around in the throes of monster contractions, making agonized noises while her heels drummed frantically on the bed. In my case, it was more like my entire psyche and consciousness was rebooting.

We finally both calmed down enough that it was possible to conduct a rational conversation. I was lying on my side, head propped on one arm. She was looking angrily at me. If you haven't noticed, Kelly is not your classic weepy, over-emotional female after sex.

I said, "WHAT???!!"

She said heatedly, "What's the matter with you? We could have done that a year ago, you son-of-a-bitch??!!"

I whined defensively, "I didn't want to take the chance of losing you."

She gestured down her incredible naked body and said, "What the fuck does that mean??!! This is all yours!! It's always BEEN all yours!!" She added angrily, "You just had to TAKE it!!"

Her lovely face radiated pissed-off as she said, "This doesn't change anything. All it does is add another dimension to our hitherto wonderful love. I'd shoot any other fucking male before I would EVER let him have what's yours."

She added fiercely, "Now that you've finally gotten your head out of your ass, you're going to be stuck fucking this for the rest of your life; MISTER!!"

Like I said, "Kelly is not your typical shrinking-violet."

Once we had broken the ice It was like we couldn't get enough of each other. I think my record was three times with Pia. Kelly and I surpassed that mark well before sun-up. So, we were both a little worse for wear at breakfast.

Sitting there over the Eggs-Benedict, I was interested in the interplay between Chelsea and her husband. He was a steady guy, almost sixteen years older. His main role was to serve as the foundation for her brilliance. In many ways Kelly and I operated the same way. She was the sharp edge of the axe and I provided the heft. It was a very effective combination.

I explained the situation that Chelsea's brother Bill was facing. The husband nodded his head and said, "That sounds familiar. Frameups always come down to money, or revenge, sometimes both."

Chelsea was radiating a mixture of white-hot fury and existential menace. It was an uncanny metamorphosis. It was as if this tiny little woman was in the process of unfolding into a fifty-foot Dragon; right there, over the breakfast canapes.

She said with cold and eerie calm, "Do you think that others are involved?"

I said, "There is no way the two Bennet's could pull this off. Bennett Senior is a member of the Joint Chiefs. So, he could set the gears in motion, but he is way too visible in the command structure to be directly hands-on. If he was pulling shit, then the people around him would know it."

Chelsea said, her voice hard, "Maybe they do."

I looked at her puzzled. She said casually, "People talk. I count on that. I assume Bennett Senior has a staff?"

I said, "Of course, they operate like every other military organization, everything from J-1 to J-8. In civilian terms that means they have hundreds of lower level staff."

Chelsea said, "Good, that's exactly what I was hoping for. Somewhere, somebody has said something indiscreet. All we have to do is listen in."

I said, "There is no doubt about that. People in those agencies gossip more than teenyboppers at a junior high school dance, but this all would have taken place months, perhaps years, ago. So how do we listen in to something that's already happened?"

Chelsea said menacingly, "Let's go into my war-room and maybe I can dig something up." She was completely in control now. It was clear that this delicate little woman was an entirely different species when her blood was up.

Her war-room was wall to wall monitors and a series of workstations on a desk which formed a half circle around a large chair. She sat and did a little typing, adding conversationally, "There isn't a phone call made inside the Beltway that isn't recorded and stored at the Bumblehive out in Utah."

I had no concept of what she had just said.

She continued with, "It's the NSA's Massive Data Repository. The number hasn't been invented to describe the total storage capacity of that place. All of the mass communications in every major city in the U.S. are recorded and stored there."

She smiled conspiratorially, "I worked there as a tech intern for a couple of weeks. That was back in my wilder days, before I met Tommy. A little investment in the future so to speak. They'll never find the back-door I planted."

I didn't know what was more alarming, the fact that the U.S. Government was intercepting and storing everything from business conversations to phone sex; or that this beautiful little woman could so easily defeat them.

She grinned and said mockingly, "Bluffdale Utah is the epicenter of polygamy in the U.S. I just love the dynamic of polygamists and Federal snoops fighting it out for turf in one little dusty town. They ought to make a movie about it."

She turned to me and said, "I have an optimized ultra-high-speed compression algorithm that operates like the old Carnivore. It finds the meat, but it needs keywords. Tell me who to include and what I'm looking for. We can refine the search after we get a preliminary result."

I listed all the names of the potential players; from prime suspects, like the Bennetts, to every low- level minion, like McCarthy. I also included the slut-wife's family.

The keywords were more challenging, since the greater the number of criteria the longer the processing time. We both knew that the answer was somewhere in that mass of data, but we were going to have to sort through exabytes to find it.

Fortunately, my little friend also controlled a fifty-million-computer botnet. So, she had more compute power at her delicate little fingertips than the NSA. The Red Dragon was indeed, a mighty creature.

Chelsea entered the names and keywords. We agreed to just search on words like "Iran"; "Bennett"; "Hughes"; and "Esfahan" to start. We could expand the search if we didn't get any hits, but it made good sense to cut right to the chase. If those two were the target, then their names would be in the communications of interest.

Chelsea turned to me and said brightly, "This will take a while. So, why don't you go find lunch?"

I was still shaken by what I'd just witnessed. A lot of your sense-of well-bring comes from knowing that your dirty deep-down secrets are buried in the clutter of everybody else's. I now realized that communication in the U.S., voice and data, is recorded and searchable. So, it would be possible for the right people to pick through the details of anybody's private life at light speeds.

That also meant that there is no such thing as real privacy, no matter what Fourth Amendment rights you think you have. And of course, that raised Juvenal's old question, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"; who watches the watchers?

I felt like I needed to talk with Kelly about what happened last night. So, I invited her to walk over to the Naked Fisherman at the Cliff at Cap to eat, just the two of us. It just seemed like a good place to settle things with her.

On the way over, I told her about Chelsea's little trick; searching the government's secret stash of citizen information from 4,000 miles away. I said, "Chelsea Hughes has so much power at her finger-tips that I wonder about her. If power corrupts. She must be one white Persian cat short of being a James Bond villain."

Kelly looked at me fondly and said, "That's what Tommy is there for lover. He rules the roost, not her. He's her stabilizer, the part of the couple who provides steadiness and purpose. Chelsea knows that's his role. And she would be rudderless without him. It's the reason why they love each other so much."

I was about to respond to that, when she speared me with a look from those incredible emerald green eyes and said dryly, "I'm going to shoot you if you start going all girly on me. I love you, body and soul. We complete each other, just like the Hughes-Meissner's. That will never change. You're mine forever. Just accept it."

Then she turned serious, "I know that you were burned by Pia, but nothing changes between us. It just means we have fun and entertaining things to do at night, or any other place where the fancy strikes. Nothing about the rest of our life is different."

I started to open my mouth and Kelly reached her right arm behind her, to the holster where she keeps the Barretta. She said, "Shhhhhh!! I know I made a mistake getting Tedesco's DNA. It was stupid and thoughtless."

She actually looked remorseful as she said, "Tedesco was just a mission objective to me. I didn't have the slightest idea that you felt that way about me. All I knew was that I was devoted to you and that I would do anything to make you happy. I knew that Pia's murder was eating you up. It was more than I could ever hope that you cared enough for me, that my fucking Tedesco would hurt you. I just didn't think the situation all the way through."

Then she turned deadly serious, "Now that I know how you feel; hear this. When I make a commitment, I honor it. I know what the rules are, and I'd die before I break them."

Then she added mischievously, "I'm yours until death do us part. If you want a ceremony then fine, but it changes nothing. I'll be yours until you say otherwise."

It was that simple. I knew that she meant it. We had been together long enough for me to recognize when she was being serious. She said with a big smile, "So do we have an understanding. Or am I going to have to kill you, because no other member of the estrogen bearing species can have you now?"

I thought "what a woman!! What a marvelous life partner."

I held up my arms in mock surrender, smiled and said, "Don't shoot baby. I accept your terms."

*****

I had just assumed that this whole clusterfuck was some sort of stupid revenge scenario, centering on Bennett minor paying Bill Hughes back for ruining his career. However, Hughes was nothing more than collateral damage. The real plot was much more devious and bizarre.

How did I know that? I literally heard every word of the conversations that set it up. Of course, it was the U.S. government and its eternal distrust of its citizenry that gave us that golden opportunity.