Spy Games

by Jillian Boyd

  Title Page

  SPY GAMES

  Thrilling Spy Erotica

  A House of Erotica Collection

  Publisher Information

  Spy Games

  published in 2015 by House of Erotica

  an imprint of Andrews UK Limited

  www.houseoferoticabooks.com

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright © House of Erotica 2015

  The rights of the authors have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Introduction by the editor

  To me, the word “spy” conjures up images of exotic locations, gadgets that can both kill and tell time and men in impeccably tailored suits seducing and deducing their way around the globe. I like to think one Mr. James Bond is to blame for this particular image. Certainly he is partially to blame for the anthology you’re holding in your hands right now.

  I have always been fascinated with spies and detectives. It’s a world that seems so very far from our own, a world of going deep undercover, of faces and names that may or may not be who you think they are. Of - while not always glammed up like the world James Bond inhabits - true grit and danger lurking around every corner. Spies and detectives have always captured the imagination of readers and viewers around the world, whether very real or fictionally so. They certainly captured my imagination, from the moment I first looked deep into the gun barrel and saw Pierce Brosnan’s suited up charmer stare back at me.

  Since then, I have loved plenty of spies and detectives, both real (I adore Mata Hari and her adventures) and on the page and screen. From Mr. Bond came Ethan Hunt, Sherlock Holmes, the men and women of Spooks, Idris Elba’s brooding Detective John Luther and, most importantly of all, Trevor Eve as Waking the Dead’s DSI Peter Boyd. Each of these characters was part of the inspiration for the concept of this anthology - the danger of the spy game, combined with the elations and ecstasy of erotica.

  Sex and death. As both Foucault and Freud argued, the two are unquestionably fused - they certainly are in this anthology. Throw in some exquisite locations - like South Florida in the middle of summer, New York in the dying days of autumn and a beautiful evening in a cafe in Italy - some thrills and spills, secret agents, assassins, CIA operatives and even a couple of trips back in time, not to mention a dash of saucy steampunk, and you’ve got a veritable thrill ride of an anthology.

  9 tantalising tales. 9 authors. Your mission, should you choose to accept it? Read the stories tucked between these covers and lose yourself in sex, death and the thrill of playing spy games.

  This message will not self-destruct. Otherwise there would be no anthology left to read...

  Your editor, Jillian Boyd

  The Sound of the Chime

  Ashton Peal

  Her call sign is Chime, but Operator called her “Ma Bell” once or twice because she was American and always worked the phones. It no longer fits her current position, but is instead a leftover from her first post on loan from The Company to the Atlantic Group. That was back before the incident and her subsequent reassignment. Chime, she thinks to herself sometimes, doing silent penance in the belfries of the Moon.

  The Moon is what they all call Europe, derived from Jupiter’s satellite Europa. Everything in her life is a code. Names for the names for the names.

  She paces across the bare floor of the empty apartment-cum-office and turns on the radio. Usually, there’s a crackle and hum as the vibrations from strategically placed transmitters all over The Drake’s current hotel room here in Paris are collected on the hidden antennae and converted into sound. Usually the oscilloscope springs into life, the electric green line dancing in sines and waves to visually represent the flow of sound.

  But now, and for the last day, nothing. Turbid, dead air. Chime shifts her glasses, glowing green in the flat light of the control panel, and waits for The Drake’s voice. Her chest tightens and she shakes, until she finally remembers to exhale all in a rush.

  Why hasn’t she heard anything?

  In her cold silence, she thinks back to how she got here.

  ***

  Operator wasn’t the first man who’d fallen for Chime. He wasn’t even the first at The Company. But Operator, however, had fallen in the most spectacular manner.

  Chime’s first post out of the academy and after the probationary office period was as a telephonic drop box in a joint-op between The Company and the other organization whose official name Chime never knew. At first, she thought her post would be glamorous; she had visions of exotic spy movies and handsome men in sunglasses. In her imagination, she sipped coffee in the sidewalk cafes in the latticed shadow of the Eiffel Tower, basked on the sunny beaches of Spain, reeled around the white marble and red wine in the fountains of Rome. But, as she quickly learned was to be a disappointing pattern, Chime’s expectations and reality refused to line up.

  Instead, she was shuttled by red-eye flights and overnight couchette from glorious city to glorious city to sit at desks and answer the phone. In Hamburg, City of Bridges, she saw just the end of the Trostbrücke from the women’s restroom in the rented office. In Florence, she occupied an attic bedroom in a sublet apartment on the Villa degli Artisti that smelled like dust and was covered in plastic. London and Paris were the worst because she had to commute by train during rush hour every day.

  Her job had been to receive coded status updates and messages, then re-code them and pass them along to others. Codes for codes for codes. Eight, ten, twelve, twenty-four hours a day, her shifts at the phone were interminable. Long stretches of blank, dull time punctuated by the piercing ring and stage play dialogue. Each time she answered with the same words, although the languages changed and the accents shifted.

  “At the sound of the chime, it will be...” and then something close to the time. She rang the little silver bell she kept on her desk for emphasis.

  The empty offices were her Globe where every night she came on in a different costume to read the same lines to the empty house. Lines, chime, scene. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Good night.

  The monotony was monolithic. On her end, it was simple: two minutes slow meant everything was fine; the right time meant she was being listened to or had been killed and replaced; two minutes fast meant to abort the mission. She never knew what the missions were, only that people would call her and she would recite her lines and ring a small bell on the edge of her desk and the caller would mumble something in return.

  “Oh drat, I’ll be late for lunch.” The use of a “d” word, “late” and a meal other than breakfast meant that supply lines needed to be restocked by tomorrow.

  “I wonder if Sam will miss the train.” A “w” word, a unisex name and ground transportation meant the assassination was complete.

  Chime took these messages, re-coded them and then passed them off to Operator.

  Operator. He was the only person Chime was allowed to call out to and the on
ly person she was allowed to say more than her canned speech to. She began to look forward to the weekly call, hearing his voice on the other end.

  “Hello,” he said the first time. “Operator.”

  It might have been her starvation for contact, but Chime had never heard a voice like his before. It was continental, but accented with little tinges and diphthongs she couldn’t place. It was like Operator’s voice had its serial number filed off and its auditory prints wiped cleaned. Chime, the empty Echo of the phone lines, felt it worm down the wires and lodge into her ear.

  “Hello?” He began to breathe heavily and Chime could hear the air move in and out, in and out. The sounds rubbed against her ears, pulling a shiver through her scalp and down her shoulders.

  “Hi,” she finally said. “I’m trying to find the address for Preston Window Models.” This was how Chime relayed that the team was moving on to the next safe house.

  “Are you?” Through the lines, she could hear his smile pulling the word sounds into different shapes. Chime didn’t know. Was this a test? A wrong number?

  “Yes?” she replied, although the inflection made clear it was a question. “I’m trying to find the address for Preston-”

  “I heard you,” Operator interrupted. “I just wanted to see if I couldn’t interest you in the Prentiss Door Painting.”

  Chime felt the blood rush from her head into seemingly nothing and became acutely aware of the pools of sweat beneath her arms. This wasn’t a code she knew. She’d never heard of this.

  “I... I mean...”

  “I’m just kidding,” Operator said. “They’re located on the fountain side of the plaza. Would you like me to connect you?”

  Chime sighed loudly in relief at the sound of the all-clear phrase. “No, thank you.”

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  Chime hung up the phone, her hands still trembling. She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, then pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. Hot, she thought, flushed.

  From then on, Chime thought of Operator as a kindred spirit. He was her one point of human contact in the cities after cities after cities. Company Man after Company Man after Company Man could shuttle her to bus stations and borders, but every Friday she would call the latest number in the lines of redirections. She would hold her breath as the receiver rang, waiting on the edge of her chair for his warm voice and that slight burn of charm she’d become so attached to. Every time she wondered if this would be the one where it was someone else - a new voice, a new Operator, a final link to the world lost.

  But every Friday he answered with what at least she hoped was encoded laughter as he said, “Hello. Operator.”

  Their relationship was entirely in code, but that was nothing new to Chime. They flirted as they ran through their lines across the telephonic stage.

  “I need to the number of a place to ship a package.” She punctuated the lines with puckered lips.

  “Oh?” Was that a slight cluck of the tongue she heard? “A package?”

  “Yes, a very large one. Near Old Town.” The size was an ad-lib, but the location was Company-directed code. “Please,” she drew out the word for three extra beats. “Can you do that? For me?”

  Back and forth, they smiled and laughed and held hands only through the sounds of their mouths. It was never longer than a minute, but her calls to Operator were sparks that she kindled throughout the week. Chime would replay the conversations again and again in her mind, sometimes surprising herself to find her fingers touching her lips or grazing the space beneath her clavicle as she mouthed the words over and over. She frequently rolled her neck from side to side, feeling the sparks in her scalp pulled down by the weight of her hair and across her shoulders, setting her skin alight.

  It wasn’t perfect, but it was good. Until the night that Operator broke the rules and he called her.

  It was 1:37 a.m. and Chime woke up at the first ring, not yet knowing who it was. She ran to the desk and picked up the receiver, running through the math in her mind and running her hands over the desk for the bell.

  “At the sound of the chime, it will be-”

  “Ma,” the voice on the other end slurred. “Ma Bell, it’s me.”

  Of course she recognized Operator’s voice as he spoke, but the context made no sense. She hadn’t dialed his number, so that’s not how this was supposed to work. Was he hurt? She hadn’t been trained for this situation.

  “At the sound of the chime,” she began again, but Operator cut her off.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “I need you.” As her consciousness more fully returned, however, Chime realized why his speech was slurred. She could almost smell the wine through the receiver, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Hey,” Operator said. “Hey. Can you hear me?”

  Chime pressed the receiver close to her ear. She desperately wanted to say, Of course I can, but her tongue was frozen. She could improvise in her reports to him, but here, where she was the chime and the echo, the rules were clearer.

  “Hey, Ma Bell,” he finally said, “I, I have a very important message for you.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve seen London, I’ve seen France,” he belched, “are you wearing any underpants?”

  Chime was at a loss.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, suddenly solid. “It’s just, I’m so alone. You’re the only person I know and I’ve never even seen your face.”

  Chime knew what he meant. These were the words that she would say, too, if she could. If she could, she would reach through the phone, across the wires, and grab him by the hair and pull him into her empty office-apartment. She would press her lips against his wine-reddened lips and tell him that she knew that they were one and the same. But she couldn’t. There were rules in place and he was breaking them and she should have just hung up. But she couldn’t.

  “I wish I could see you,” Operator grunted as Chime heard him settle heavily onto something. “I wish I could touch you. Would you like that?”

  She would, of course, but she didn’t know how to tell him that. So she said what she knew how to say.

  “At the sound of the chime, it will-”

  “Don’t,” Operator broke through. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. Listen and tell me if you can hear this.”

  There was a rustling on the other end of the line, then a knock, like the receiver had been taken from Operator’s ear and laid down. When he spoke again, he was further away and the rustling sounds were much louder. In her mind’s eye, Chime saw giant hands moving across a table, jacket sleeves brushing against the body, while off in the distance a tiny drunk head called down to her.

  “Can you hear this?” There was a slow whisper, like a tearing sound. Then she recognized it. A zipper. Is he taking his jacket off? she wondered, but the soft sounds of skin on skin impact and friction began to create a susurration down the lines. She knew then what Operator was doing and, for a moment, she pulled the phone away from her ear. Unsure of what to do, she held it there like a statute.

  But then, from far away, she heard him call. “Tell me you’re listening.”

  She placed the phone back to her ear, pressing it so hard that she could hear the echo of her own blood pulsing over the increasing thrum of Operator’s masturbation.

  “Tell me you’re listening,” he said again. “Tell me you’re listening to me fuck you.”

  Chime shivered at the way that his forced breath pushed through the phone lines and into her ear, almost as if he was standing beside her. He grunted on the other end and the breathing became faster, shallower. The friction of his sleeves against his body, his palm against his cock, the regular pumping of his fist and Chime’s heart set her ringing, too. Her skin opened, prickles of heat and dampness everywhere - beneath the long hair on her ne
ck, under her arms, along the nape of her neck, and especially between her legs.

  The pace increased, the momentum building. The sounds from the other end of the line became wetter and fiercer. Chime could almost smell the pre-come dripping out, slickening Operator’s tip, spilling onto his hand as he kept pumping away. There was a very deep ache and longing within the walls of Chime’s abode.

  The oscilloscope’s light bounced and jittered. It shook under the quickening sounds and the heavy breathing. Chime’s heart beat in time, the pressure in her chest building, squeezing down and clenching between her hips.

  “Say it,” Operator moaned. “Say it for me.”

  Chime whispered, forcing her mouth and lungs to move slowly, controlling the explosion building inside of her. She fought back panic and excitement.

  “At the sound of the chime,” she rubbed her palm against the warmth between her legs and the slow, moving pressure set off a miniature carpet bomb of pleasure, priming the ground for the ultimate release. She squeezed with her whole hand, the pressure in her body throbbing in time.

  “Say it.” He called to her like he was drowning beneath a thousand tiny waves of motion.

  “At the sound,” she gasped, “at the sound of the chime, it will be-”

  A burst of static ripped through the receiver and Chime threw it down. Ears ringing, panting and suddenly cold and aware of the bare walls in the seasick green light of the oscilloscope, she looked around for the Company’s eyes for eyes for eyes. The waves of pleasure soured into the fuzzy jitter of the dancing light.

  Chime picked up the receiver between her fingers like it was poisoned.

  “Hello?” Silence. “Hello?”

  But the line was dead.

  ***

  Chime never heard Operator’s voice again. Within the hour, a man from The Company knocked on the door to her hotel room.

  “I think they’re out of towels now,” he said. “It would be terrible to lose your dry cleaning.”