The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer?

by Pat Powers

  "OK," I said.

  "I am not a man," said Lady Astra. "Yet one of the purposes of Gorean style dance is to excite and please men sexually. I cannot directly judge the effectiveness of its moves, except by methods such as this."

  "OK, it's pure research," I said, grinning.

  "Oh, it pleases me too, to hold you so intimately," said Astra. "I would prefer to hold you in my mouth, but it would interfere with my ability to watch the dance."

  "Well, yeah," I said, "it would interfere, and could be kinda dull for a few minutes."

  "From what I hear, you're a VERY responsive guy," said Astra.

  "Well, I do my best," I said modestly. "These Gorean women really know how to bring out the best in a guy, too, if you know what I mean."

  "I believe I do," said Astra.

  Chapter 18

  The Baldrick Eames Affair

  It was late in the Furnsome household. Betty Furnsome was alone in her study, a cool, indirectly lit place filled with books and memorabilia from her years with Coke.

  Furnsome reached into her lower right hand desk drawer and pulled out the few papers that were stored there, then hooked her finger into a shallow indentation in one corner of the drawer and pulled out the drawer's false bottom. Hidden beneath it was a cell phone. She picked it up, punched in a series of numbers, let it ring twice, then set it on her desk and took another sip of her brandy and another puff of the Cuban cigar smoldering in her ashtray.

  The phone rang. She picked it up.

  "All mimsy were the borogoves," said a voice over the phone.

  "Where Alph, the sacred river, ran," responded Furnsome.

  "Well, how are you doing, Mimi?" asked the voice. Mimi was her code name. These people were about as paranoid as they come -- in their case, with good reason.

  "Just fine, Ferdy," said Furnsome, savoring again the fact that they hadn't figured out why she'd picked out that code name for him.

  "What can I do for you?" Ferdy asked.

  "Nothing, really, just thought I'd give you a little heads up," said Furnsome. "I had a guest today -- a private eye looking for info about April Dancer."

  "Oh, really?" asked the voice. "How'd he get to you?"

  "Apparently, some of the flock have been writing emails to Dancer chastising her for her immorality, that sort of thing," said Furnsome. "My name may have been mentioned in the emails, or somebody he interviewed may have given me up as the highest-ranking Mopus Deim member in the area."

  "So you don't think he knew anything," said Ferdy.

  "Not anything specific," responded Furnsome. "He was obviously on a fishing expedition. That said, he did seem to suspect that Mopus Deim has a covert ops arm staffed by intelligence officers."

  "Hard to keep it a secret after the Baldrick Eames Affair," said Ferdy. “Amis let a lot of people down.”

  "I don't think he knew a lot more than that a covert ops group MIGHT exist," said Furnsome. "It felt like a fishing expedition. There was no sense that he was closing in on anything, just that he was checking this out as one lead among several."

  "That famous instinct of yours?" asked Ferdy.

  "Exactly," said Furnsome.

  "What's his name?" asked Ferdy.

  "John Bowman," said Furnsome.

  "We'll watch out for him," said Ferdy.

  "Probably a good idea," said Furnsome. "He didn't give much away, but he's definitely sharp. He might be a problem."

  "Don't you worry," said Ferdy, "you know how good we are at solving problems."

  "I do indeed, but I'm not worried," said Furnsome. "Just making sure. Bye now."

  "Bye," said Ferdy.

  Chapter 19

  A blossom of swirling melodies which was visually echoed by the bodies of the dancers

  "The introduction is complete, now begins the seduction," said Lady Astra.

  "The seduction ... sounds good," I said.

  "It IS good," said Astra.

  Then music picked up, becoming a lively, happy tune, with the flute and synthesizer skirling gracefully over a strong, steady backbeat.

  The dancers moved more rapidly, still in an intricate pattern, but their hips began twitching in a sharp, excited way in response to their backbeat. The dancers smiled now as they danced, occasionally crying out as the music pleased them. Their arms now moved rapidly, whirling and tracing the air in time to the music and in complement to the motion of their bodies.

  Men were shouting out from the audience, cries of encouragement, whistles and hoots of pleasure. I looked around me and saw that most members of the audience were swaying in time to the music as they watched, their faces rapt. Clearly, the dancers HAD the audience at this point, though it might be more appropriate to say that the audience was participating in the dance as fully as they could and still be an audience.

  I turned my attention back to the dance, which Astra was watching with rapt attention. The music was in full flower, a blossom of swirling melodies which was visually echoed by the bodies of the dancers as they swooped and flowed around the stage, their arms and hands moving with the curious flowing grace that is characteristic of belly dance.

  But unlike traditional belly dance, this was powerfully, overtly sexual. Some of the dancers were doing the traditional belly dance move that involved standing with their legs braced well apart and arching their backs so thoroughly that their heads were level with their butts and their rib cages were the highest parts of their bodies, with their hands floating eerily above them, and their bellies rippling from their sternum to their mons. Very often their outer labia would gape open as they did so.

  But this straightforward sexual display somehow didn't seem crude or raw, perhaps because it was part of so much graceful movement.

  It was definitely sexy, however. I had never seen such sexy dancing. I'd been in quite a few strip clubs and none of them even approached this dance for sheer horny hotness. It wasn't just because of the nakedness of the dancers or the raw sexuality of some of their moves -- strippers in Atlanta performed totally nude and most of them had no compunctions about displaying their labia inches from their customers' noses if that bring them a tip. But in every strip club I had ever been in, it was obvious to me that for the dancers, dancing was work. Occasionally a dancer would lose herself to the music in a strip club, almost always when there weren't a lot of guys watching her and looking like they might tip.

  There were also restrictions on how the dancers in Atlanta strip clubs could touch themselves, which mainly amounted to, "Keep your fingers out of your crotch!"

  The Gorean dancers were giving a private performance, not a public performance, and there were no restrictions on what they might do, any more than there are any laws on how a wife might dance for her husband in the privacy of their bedroom.

  And since many of the men in the audience were in fact the dancers' husbands and masters, it was in a sense a very intimate performance. The dancers were expressing their joy in the music and in the dance, their sensuality in the movement of their bodies and their sexuality in the way they dressed and danced.

  The women did not all look like models or strippers -- in real life, they were office managers, wives, waitresses, middle managers, artists, real estate agents, what have you. Their faces were the faces of the people you see around you every day. But the dance had made their bodies lithe and nimble, and had taught them grace, and the psychological courage it had taken to accept their submissive sexual natures had express it had made them strong and bold. And it all showed in the dance, and rendered them beautiful.

  It was easy for me to respond to their obvious pleasure in the dance, and I found myself clapping and shouting encouragement along with the rest.

  Astra cried out encouragingly, too, occasionally smiling and nodding when a dancer moved especially well. I suspected that a smile from her probably meant more to these dancers than a round of applause from the rest of the audience.

  I saw some exceptional dancing. One dancer, who stood out fro
m the rest because her legs were entirely concealed by baggy harem pants, glided across the floor, her hips shimmying back and forth and sideways, but her legs apparently not moving at all. She moved with uncanny grace.

  "How does she DO that?" I asked Astra, nodding at the dancer when she glided in front of us.

  "There is a step," said Astra. "It requires some effort to learn. Many short, quick steps allow the dancer to move across the floor without any apparent movement of the legs, and also allows the hips to move freely. The harem pants or a skirt conceals the move and makes the dancer appear to glide. Few students learn it as well as sublima has."

  I had a sudden vision of April struggling to learn these steps in some bare-floored dance studio, surrounded by others working on the same steps. I thought of all that effort, all that devotion to her craft, perhaps gone because her sexiness bothered some loons.

  Chapter 20

  That whole disturbed criminal mastermind vibe

  Bowman's luck was running with him, though he didn't know it at the time. Sandy Wrathbottom's lack of altitude in MacKesson Enterprises' hierarchy meant she couldn't easily find a private place to use her cell phone. If she tried to talk in her cubicle, someone was sure to overhear her, there was just no privacy there for the cubicle dwellers, as was intended by the corporate hierarchy.

  It was two hours before Sandy was able to locate an empty office belonging to a higher-up whom she was sure wouldn't return, or get used by another cow-orker.

  She pulled out her cell phone and punched in a number. She was a little nervous, and misdialed a couple of times before she got it right.

  "Hello, Angela, this is Sandy," she said. "Listen, I had a visitor I think you should know about."

  "I'm listening," responded Angela.

  "He's a private investigator named John Bowman," said Wrathbottom. "He was poking around about April Dancer."

  "Really," said Angela.

  "Really," said Wrathbottom.

  "Did he get anything out of you?" Angela asked.

  "I don't think so," said Wrathbottom. "He really didn't seem to have anything solid to go on. He just had some emails from some Alfan blowholes to April Dancer and apparently the Alfans took the opportunity to point the finger to us, probably just on general principles."

  "That figures," said Angela.

  "Yeah, I don't really think he has anything real on us, just some suspicions about us," said Wrathbottom. "Thing is, he did seem to have talked to someone who knew how things go in serious dance companies. He was asking things like "Did the dance lead you to kidnap April Dancer?" -- the sort of questions you wouldn't expect a cop kinda guy to ask unless he's been talking to a dancer like us."

  "Think one of your group has been talking to him?" asked Angela.

  "I thought of that, too," said Wrathbottom. "If one of my group had been talking, I think he'd have had some much more pointed questions to ask, you know? He seemed like a pretty sharp character and he tried to rattle me by bringing up April Dancer's name, and if he'd talked to one of us, I think he'd have had some much better stuff to rattle me with."

  "Maybe," said Angela. "Do you know who he's working for?"

  "He said he's working for Dancer's master," said Wrathbottom.

  "Wants his property back, I guess," said Angela. "Poor man."

  "Poor bastard," said Wrathbottom.

  "Anything else to report?" asked Angela.

  "No ... wait, yeah," said Wrathbottom. "He was obviously fishing for leads, so I gave him Zygmonska."

  "Was that a good idea?" asked Angela. "She knows you well."

  "Yeah, if he can find her, and if she wants to tell him anything, he might find out a lot about us," said Wrathbottom. "She dropped right off the map. This guy Bowman might be good, but he'll have to be ungodly good to find Zygmonska, and even if he does find her, there's no telling what she'll tell him, and she left us a long time ago anyway."

  "Yeah, but didn't you tell me she's really bright?" asked Angela. "Maybe she's figured a few thing out."

  "She's not just bright, she's so smart it's creepy," said Wrathbottom. "You never know what she's thinking, but every so often she comes out with something she could never have known, and yet she does. And it's not that she's trying to impress you or anything, it's just something she blurts out without thinking about it."

  "She certainly sounds like someone who might figure a few things out," said Angela.

  "Yeah, but she's freaky," said Wrathbottom. "What she might figure out, or want to figure out, or want to tell you about what she's figured out, well, it could be anything. I think Bowman'll have trouble dragging anything out of her even if he finds her, and even if she's got something on us."

  "She sounds kind of uncanny," said Angela with a laugh in her voice. "Maybe Bowman would think she's the one who did it."

  "Very possible, she gives off that whole disturbed criminal mastermind vibe," returned Wrathbottom. "In any event, Bowman will have fun trying to figure her out."

  "All right, then," said Angela. "Anything else?"

  "Bowman said the cops were probably following the same trail he was and would be interviewing me soon," said Wrathbottom. "Anything else I need to do?"

  "No, I'd stick with the same story with them," said Angela. "They may try some more hardball tactics than Bowman. They may even arrest you. Remember your drill. Ask for a lawyer, don't tell them anything and we'll have someone down to bail you out as soon as you call."

  "That's good to know," said Wrathbottom. "Thanks a lot. Bye."

  Chapter 21

  Some heavy hitters in the game now

  Andrew Thomson's main computer made an 'eeping' noise and he knew one of his phone taps had picked up something of interest. The conversation was recorded on his hard drive and also backed up on an external drive – Thomson would NEVER use a cloud. It was the tap he'd set on Wrathbottom at Bowman's request. Thomson flipped on his audio speakers (he usually preferred to work in silence, as noise could break his concentration) and listened in. He nodded as Wrathbottom spoke. Looks like Bowman's suspicions had been accurate. Although he looked down a little on Bowman because he didn't have the technical know-how that Thomson himself possessed, he also respected Bowman's legwork and his instincts. A large part of the secret of good intel was knowing who to tap.

  He put in a call to Bowman's phone and got 'leaveamessage' so he did. It wasn't typical of Bowman to abandon his cell phone while he was on a case, but it sometimes happened.

  A few minutes later, Thomson's op called in to say that the tap had successfully been placed on the microwave relay tower near the Furnsome home and that the office location was next. Thomson had done some research after Bowman had asked him to tap Furnsome and come to the conclusion that there were very few hard lines going into that house and that therefore there might be a lot of cell phones in operation there.

  Cell phones could be hard to trace if the phone was in motion, but if the phone was being used from a fixed location, there were several options. One was to tap everything that went into or out of the nearby microwave tower or towers that the cell phone would be running its calls through.

  This tended to eat up hard drive space big time. The more efficient technique was the one Thomson had used on the tower near MacKesson Enterprises -- set up the software to intercept all calls and run them through voice recognition software, only recording those conversations that included keywords like "kidnap" "dancer" "April" "belly dancer" "Gorean" and the like -- as well as any conversations that showed evidence of having been scrambled or encrypted. This led to some conversations that were unrelated being taped -- April was a month, too, for example -- but it ultimately saved a huge amount of hard drive space and wading through irrelevant conversations after the fact.

  It still cost a lot of bandwidth, but Thomson bought that stuff in industrial quantities.

  About four hours after his agent had set the Furnsome tap, Thomson got another alert. It was from the Furnsome tap, and it had been flagge
d because it was an encrypted call.

  Not totally surprising -- Furnsome was a big time businesswoman, it wasn't surprising that she would have encrypted conversations. Still, it had to be checked out.

  Thomson ran the file through a special filter he'd designed to detect and identify various kinds of encryption. It didn't crack any codes, just told you what they were so you could use the right software to decrypt them.

  Thomson had expected to see one of the commercial flavors of PGP with a 4192-base key. That was more than enough to handle most commercial encryption needs.

  Instead, the software reported that the conversation was encrypted via Greyman9.

  Greyman9! Thomson's heart thrilled at the sight of it on his screen. Greyman9 was a CIA black ops code. CIA black ops! He was going to get PAID to hack into a CIA black ops code!

  Oh, this was sweet.

  Then Thomson's mood turned serious. He'd better call John. If this call was from or to a Mopus Deim black ops type, there were some heavy hitters in the game now. John would need to watch his back a LOT more carefully.

  Thomson made the call. Bowman's phone was still just taking messages. No telling what was up with that. If Bowman didn't respond by noon tomorrow, Thomson would consider HIM missing. And considering who might be on the other end of the Greyman9 encrypted call, that could be bad news.

  Thomson then began the task of upping the security of all his systems to the max, doing the hacker of equivalent of "going to the mattresses." If there were CIA black ops people involved here -- and Greyman9 was a pretty good indicator that there were -- then they would have electronic intel people who could hack HIM. Thomson considered himself to be more than a match for your average corporate computer security expert. But the CIA spooks might have someone almost as good as him.

  It never occurred to Thomson that they might have someone as good as him or even better. He was a hacker. Hackers didn't think like that.