True Lies - Redux Ch. 05

Jim got up and stalked out of the room. I was mad also and I stood up to chase after him. That fucker wasn't getting the last word!

But then Jennifer came in the room as soon as Jim had left.

She smiled and said, "sit down, Rachel. Everyone else will be back in here in a minute. Even Jim. You really, really hurt him. Do you know that? Do you care?"

"You're close to Jim? You know him well?"

"I'd say I'm pretty close to him. He just literally saved my life or rather saved me from a fate worse than death - sex slave to some Muslim supremacist nutcase. Your good friend Grayson laughed as he gave me away. You dumped Jim for Grayson? Stupid is as stupid does girl."

"I never meant to hurt Jim. Hell, I never meant for Jim to find out, even if I did divorce him. I guess he just drove me crazy by becoming such an invisible..."

"Was he invisible when he was in your bed and holding you? Making sweet love to you? He sure has never been invisible to me in that situation. Yes. I have also been made love to by Jim and I've had sex with Grayson. Just like you. There's no comparison between the two as men AND as lovers. It's not even debatable."

"Stop rubbing my nose in it! I know what I've done, alright? He WANTS me to go back to Grayson! He doesn't love ME or want me anymore, anyway! Hell, he's probably in love with you! Is he? Is that what's going on?" I was almost wailing this. It just suddenly hit me how jealous I was of this bitch and that Jim might be interested in her.

"Settle down. I love Jim and I have a bit ever since I first met him years before he met you. We were intimate then, kind of a little summer fling. But I'm not "in love" with Jim and he doesn't feel that way about me, at least not yet. He just told me days ago that he is STILL "in love" with you. But you hurt him and you might still lose him. You might have already lost him. Your only chance is to help Jim now in his work. That's just the way it is. He is. He hates you touching or being touched by Grayson or any other man - or woman and yes, even me. But you've already done it. Now, this stinkin' job HAS to come first. So get it together girl and think very carefully what you really want and how you might still be able to get there."

Jennifer got up and left me alone then, as well. Hell, probably everyone else was watching and listening to everything in here, but at least I had the fiction of some privacy. They had just made it very clear how much they controlled my life. Flynn was a plant. Jennifer was a plant and had been in place in Grayson's organization for about a year. Dr. Ruth? Hell, SHE was probably a plant! Who else in my own law offices might be? Which secretary or paralegal or even other associate lawyer? Which one of "our" friends might be? These people were good and everywhere. Jim, for the whole time I've known him and I was utterly clueless - just a mushroom. But a well loved mushroom. Damn him.

Pretty soon they all came back in and sat down.

Decision time.

"I don't really have a choice, do I? So, of course I'll be happy to help you out. From my point of view, even IF Grayson is involved in illegal activities, I will merely be making sure Iran as well as America is following the letter and the spirit of the treaty. I will try and find out the truth of the matter, everything I can and report to you however you want me too."

Elaine said rather graciously, "Good. Thank you. Here's how we'll do it. Jim, you're just going to move back home. Rachel can merely report to you nightly or whenever she gets home. Grayson won't even probably know or care. Right Rachel?"

"As long as I don't use it as some excuse not to be with him whenever he wants. If he still wants me. Listen, I haven't heard a word from him in a week. I'm not sure he's still interested in me that way."

"Oh, he's had a bit of a rough trip to Iran. Not everything went as he expected. We'll let you know when he actually does return and just maybe you should call him then if you don't hear from him first. It's really up to you to manage that part of your relationship. You seem to have been doing OK - just keep on doing what you have been doing. And don't start suddenly asking a bunch of questions. Just keep your eyes and ears open and try and remember all the little details. Every name he communicates with. His travel plans and itinerary. It's the little details that sometimes lead to the big breaks. Maybe be extra friendly with all his staff, guards, secretaries, assistants. Just pleasant small talk. But all slow and careful. Jim can help instruct you and so can Dr. Ruth in many, many ways."

Elaine smiled but Jim didn't.

"OK, Rachel, you can go now. The FBI guys will take you wherever..."

"I thought Jim might do that?" I almost begged.

"I'll be moving back in tomorrow, midday. Then we'll talk a little and start working. Do some careful thinking 'til then, Rach...and be careful." All still in his neutral voice.

Did he still care? Did I care if he cared? Shit. Sure I did. This was worse than being in Jr. High School. And all of a sudden Jim was all too visible. He was fucking glow-in-the-dark visible! Damn it.

************

Jim -

Rachel left and the meeting broke up. Jennifer was headed to spend an hour or two with Dr. Ruth for some help countering any traumatic stress issues from both last week and previous assignments.

Elaine grabbed me and we headed to her office.

She was watching me closely.

"Can you handle moving back in with her?"

"Yeah, I can handle it," I replied in a rather surly manner.

Elaine laughed but then got serious.

"Sure you can. Just listen to yourself. This is where it gets real. You're going to HAVE to pull this off and be the best handler you can for Rachel. This might include making love to her - and still showing her you love her. Generally this would just be a normal acting job - but I know you still DO love her - and hate her at the same time - and this makes it a 1000 times more difficult. Do you remember those sex lectures way back when - at basic? What is the MAJOR function the pimp fills for his whores?"

I thought I was going to throw up and I'm sure my face showed it.

"He provides actual real "sex" for his whores - he provides THEM their real orgasms and they are bonded to him in "love", thereby. How sick is that???" And I almost broke down.

"I want you to talk with Dr. Ruth after Jennifer finishes. Spend at least an hour with her and TALK to her, damn it. This is an order."

"In the meantime you can go to your office and start reading. NSA has saturation coverage of that Grand Hotel right now where Grayson still is. The computers are recording every electronic communication and checking against the defined criteria and spitting out any comms of interest for human evaluation. Take a look at all that. We've also started some preliminary checking on the California companies producing or handling those Krytron switches - starting with Milco International Inc. - the company that did once illegally export these switches to Israel back in the Reagan era. But so many people might be involved - from janitors to mail/shipping/warehouse types to corporate execs. Someone might have been compromised via a Honeypot trap and blackmailed. Someone might have had their wife seduced and then the poor sap promised the wealth he would need to "burn the bitch" and just live well himself with a few millions. Just pure luck will be needed to turn up anything that way - general superficial searching. Hopefully Grayson will mention a name in one of his electronic comms or just maybe Rachel might catch it. Train her and work her, Jim. You damn well know what is at stake.

"And once you've got her stabilized and productive, we can send your double in now to stay with her and get her reports, if you need to travel at all. You are going to need to make at least one trip out to see Farah Peterson again and fill her in on her children, and probably get her to start divorce proceedings immediately AND cut off all access by Grayson to her funds - but only after he makes an attempt to get her to transfer a large amount to ... someone. I expect that to maybe happen as part of the krytron switches deal. No matter how much more money the Iranians gave him, he will want to keep as much of that as he can and use "other people's money" - like Farah's - if at all possible."

"But if nothing turns up we can sting or leverage someone with, and if it appears Grayson is succeeding, we may just have to eliminate him. If nothing else I can see an F-22 some dark night shooting his private jet right out of the sky with one of our "Agency" special AIM-7 Sparrows over the Atlantic or Mediterranean. But even over land these missiles are designed to almost be totally destroyed at detonation and with NOTHING to indicate USA manufacture left identifiable."

Now THAT was a pleasant vision as I left Elaine's office. As usual she was right on the money with all the important stuff, including my own fragile psyche state. The mere thought of touching Rachel right now turned my stomach, but I was a pro, wasn't I? Since when did actual "wanting" to have sex with a woman - or a man for that matter - mean anything when it came to getting some important work done? Wasn't I Mr. Superman Spy? Didn't I always have that "Bond. James Bond" superiority complex going deep in my conscious? Sure I did!

Well, Elaine was right. Welcome to the real world. I was just a man, more ordinary than not, after all. And time to suck it up and just do my best through my own weakest link. My stupid wife - and just like millions of other normal and average men who loved THEIR wives more than life itself, whether they ever got around to noticing that or not.

Damn it.

*****************

Rachel -

Somehow I got back to my condo. It no longer even seemed familiar. I guess I was in a state of shock. It was far worse than any "out-of-body" experience. More like an "out-of-this-Universe" experience. Never in a million years did I envision what a little extramarital sex would actually lead to. Jim was a spy. Grayson was an evil billionaire criminal. I was a fucking mess caught in the middle.

I KNEW, deep down, that my little imagined "love affair" with Grayson leading to a much more fulfilling life as his wife was just a fairy tale, all along. Because I never actually imagined Jim NOT being my actual husband and in my bed every night that I was there. Somehow my fantasy was that Jim would never notice, or care. After all he WAS pretty much invisible to me except those times he was holding me and physically loving me.

Who knows how long I would have lived this pleasant little fantasy life IF Grayson hadn't turned out to be so disgusting a person in the bedroom, after all? That alone killed my fantasy life and also reinforced the quite credible tale "Jim's people" had conveyed. I was already through with Grayson as a fantasy. But now I HAD to go back to him as a very real reality. How could I do this thing? And would Jim ever physically love me again? I was desperately missing that right this minute. How had I gotten here???

I was raised a JAP - a Jewish American Princess - especially by my father. I always felt I was the most precious and beautiful thing to him in the whole world. I guess that really spoiled me, but also gave me immense confidence around other boys and then men. I never needed to "flirt" for attention or even to be the center of attention. I didn't need males to tell me I was beautiful. All I needed to do was look in a mirror - and see my father's eyes looking at me as a thing of priceless beauty. And his love and respect for me was absolutely pure. And I returned his love in the same measure. How could I have hurt him as I did to be with Jim? I should have worked that out better all along. I should have MADE Jim do that, darn it!

My father and my family and I were also just the right amount of religious Jew, I always thought. We were members of the Reform community rather than Orthodox. We did not always do all three daily prayers and seldom attended both Friday night and Saturday morning Sabbath Synagogue services but generally just one or the other.

We were actually, heritage wise, Sephardi Jews. Our ancestors came to the New World after being expelled from Spain in 1492 by King Ferdinand. The very same year he funded Columbus's expedition that discovered the New World! It's not perfectly clear now, but some unknown individual ancestors of my family undoubtedly wandered in Europe a bit before finally making their way to this new land.

My father was very interested in this personal family history as well as broader world wide Jewish history. He had actually done one of those popular "Genetic Heritage" tests just to see what might pop up. It was almost a waste of money since it showed nothing surprising he didn't already know. As always, there was SOME "Gentile" genes mixed in, but the very idea of "pure blood" in any European person for roughly the last 2000 years or so was just laughable. Jews, Celts, Germans, Romans, Greeks, Slavs, Gypsies, Mongols, Huns, Arabs, and even "Black" Africans had all had babies with one another. Sometimes through rape and pillage and slavery, more often just through horniness or love and marriage. Humans ARE a very sexy species.

My father also taught me to love the USA. For the vast majority of Jews that ever lived in the USA, since the 1500's, even, THIS was indeed our promised land. We were treated more justly here than almost anywhere else in the world. Even now, more Jews lived in the USA than any other country in the world, except Israel itself. And Jews overall were more secularly and economically successful here than anywhere else, except Israel. Jewish people, at least ethnically Jewish, have held every political office except President, at every level of government, from Joe Lieberman to Henry Kissinger to Judah Benjamin - Secretary of War and then Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America in the 1860's.

Sure there had been LOTS of individual and a few broader instances of anti-Semitism in America. But nothing that approached the periodic much harsher tragedies that often befell Jews in Europe and Asia.

Even during the potentially most tragic era - the Eugenics science craziness - nothing really happened in America like the Holocaust unfolded in Europe under those "scientific" NAZI's - or even like eventually unfolded under the equally "scientific" Communists in Russia. It was the teaching of Eugenics scientific racism in just about every high school and college biology textbook in America until the 1960's that undoubtedly fueled a LOT of individual anti-Semitism. I mean, if someone is taught that it's "proven science" how can any intelligent and learned individual not ACT on the knowledge? And shouldn't scientifically proven "inferior" humans ACT inferior? And then the "superior" humans get mad when they don't?

I've been a little bit leery of science and especially the worship of science ever since I learned all this history. And I realize that in many ways Eugenics back then and the worship of science now, often presented as "secular humanism" that is merely superior to "religion", is very much a liberal leaning idea. Nevertheless I've always leaned "liberal" on the political scale in many ways. But NOT all the way to diminishing the USA in preference to just a "United Globe" politically. Most of the rest of the globe haven't treated MY people very well at all, historically. And way too many modern Muslims seem to retain that basic attitude.

I am therefore, proud to be a Jew and with such a known family and larger collective history and also proud to be an American. And growing up I never, ever thought I would marry a Catholic boy. I mean, it wasn't prejudice - merely a fact of life. My religion and my family and my heritage just meant something else was in store for me and my future.

And then I met Jim - Jimmy Ray Johnson - and it was no big deal. Hell, it was literally beneath my notice! And somehow he just kept hanging around me. First, he became my friend Sarah's boyfriend. And Sarah became very, very happy and gushed about Jim in so many ways. It was Jim this and Jim that. He was REALLY strong. He competed in martial arts tournaments and WON! He was on the Notre Dame fencing team and won many of his collegiate matches - against actual scholarship athletes at other schools that had been fencing in their fancy private high schools for ages - whereas he had just started! And then boy was he smart! He was a genius when it comes to languages. But he also knew all kinds of other really surprising stuff about history and even religion. He could make religion interesting via merely its history and "Apologetics" discussions. But mostly it was "boy, is he good in bed! Just wow!"

So I started thinking about him a tad. And I decided to test him on his religious knowledge and attitudes. Surely he had some "Catholic/Christian" superiority 'tude? Not one bit. He was amazing and interesting. He was extremely respectful and knowledgeable of Judaism - especially Old Testament Judaism but also some of the modern Reform basics. He knew who Maimonides was! He even shyly admitted he was studying and learning Hebrew on his own. He WAS amazing. I knew a little Hebrew but he soon surpassed me!

I never flirted with him and he never flirted with me. But then somehow he made Sarah really really mad - and no, it wasn't by cheating on her with some other girl - and Sarah just dumped him. He was absolutely crushed. I never learned from either what he had done but Jim swore he was very, very sorry and tried to apologize over and over but Sarah wouldn't even talk to him anymore. I tried my best to just be friends with both - just friends.

But one night I guess I had just a little more to drink than normal while just being with Jim, who wasn't acting down so much now but still had too much drink himself. And before I realized what he was doing, he just kissed me. It was like a lightning bolt. My whole body tingled.

The kiss was unexpected. My body's reaction was just shocking. Somehow the night ended and we both went home separately. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was all ridiculous. I didn't feel "romantic" towards Jim at all. I just admired him as a religious scholar and friend that needed a little help. And yet...

Again, somehow it just happened. It certainly didn't seem planned in the slightest. We had never actually been on what I considered a "date" with Jim. We just seemed to get together casually when we just happened to both be at the same bar or restaurant at the same time.

About two weeks after that one brief kiss, we made love for the first time. I discovered just how strong a man he really was. He picked me up like I was made of feathers. He threw me in the air and caught me, which made my belly tingle and my pussy too, plus it practically gushed. And he kissed me over and over. I wasn't a virgin and HAD had a few sexual encounters before. I knew all the basics of intercourse and oral pleasure, but with Jim everything was just so natural and SO much better.

I felt like I became the center of the Universe to Jim. Actually he made me feel like I was his ENTIRE universe for that whole night. I had never spent the entire night with any of my other lovers. But I didn't want this night to ever end! It was like I wasn't in control of my life at all, anymore. I was close to completing my law degree and Jim was becoming a major distraction. It almost seemed just logical to not fight it. I'd just accept Jim as my lover and that calmed me down and let me focus on my own work again.

And it worked! I was as calm and focused and happy as I had ever been before, and before I knew it I could no longer imagine my life without Jim in it. I guess that's love. I guess that's what falling head-over-heels in love does to you. I pretty much gave up my family, especially my Dad, and even my religion somewhat, to just be with Jim. The man I HAD to have above all else.