by Paul Kenyon
He dipped into his attaché case and spread an assortment of objects on the glass coffee table. "You've used most of these before, Baroness. The Spyder…" He held up the powerful little pistol-winch. "It shoots a gossamer-fine plastic line with a tensile strength of over a thousand pounds. You could scale a wall with it, or let yourself down from a thirty-story building, using the built-in clutch."
Wharton went on with his inventory. "The plastic sandal straps that become rigid and turn into knives when you hold them over a match flame. Made of a neomethylmethacrylate copolymer that 'remembers' its original shape when it's heated. And here's a garrote made of a length of thread with two buttons at the end. The thread's a superstrong long-chain polymer. Inga can sew the buttons on one of your dresses."
She stretched the garrote between her hands "You'd practically cut off someone's head before you strangled them."
He nodded. "Get a nasty cut from that thread. It's razor sharp."
"What are these shoes? They're lovely!"
"One of the heels has a magnesium core. Hot enough to melt a lock. The other…" He peeled off the rubber end to show her the coated lens."…is an infrared scope. See in the dark with it."
"And this flimsy bra?" She picked it up and looked mischievously at him through one lace cup.
He flushed. Wharton, tough and deadly as he was, came from an old New England family with a lot of Puritan blood. "It's not as flimsy as it looks, Baroness. It's made entirely of long-chain polymers. It'll hold three tons. Or you can pull out some of the threads and use them individually. It's a very strong elastic; put a rock in the cups and you've got a catapult."
"Double-barreled!" she exclaimed delightedly. Wharton flushed again.
"One more thing, Baroness." He reached in his pocket. "Here's the box the ecstasy drug came in." He handed over the tiny silver music box he'd found at the commune.
"P.S.," she said, looking at the engraved initials. "Peter's last name was Rawlings. This must belong to our mysterious friend, Mr. Sim. Key checked that number in Hong Kong for me. It's registered in the name of an Englishman — Petronius Sim, Esquire."
"What are you going to do with the box, Baroness?" Eric asked.
She showed her strong white teeth in a mirthless smile. "I'm going to return it to Mr. Sim."
When they'd gone, she gathered up the objects on the coffee table and began to stow them in her luggage. The garrote caught her attention. She pulled at the two buttons, testing the strength of the thread, imagining what it would be like to kill a man with it. She was well-equipped to kill: the little Italian automatic under her arm, where most women would have carried nothing more deadly than a dress shield; her body itself, with hands and feet and elbows and knees that could crush a man's throat, break his arm, mash his testicles to pulp, make bloody mush out of his kidneys, fracture his windpipe, stop his heart. She'd been well taught by the instructors at CIA Special Forces School and the deadly, exclusive classes run by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
None of the instructors who taught her the art of death knew her name or her identity. It was too precious a secret. She'd been set up by John Farnsworth, in his own secret identity of Key, as a visiting foreigner. CIA and DIA trained operatives from friendly foreign powers all the time.
Penelope had put on an exaggerated Italian accent, altered her face and hair during that hard, grueling year that changed her life forever; it wouldn't do for a file to exist on her — even a CIA or DIA file. The National Security Agency itself — her nominal employer — didn't know who the agent called Coin was, nor did they want to know.
Coin got the assignments that were too delicate for any. one else to handle. Coin also got a $1,250,000 annual budget, tunneled secretly through NSA's books. It paid for things like the spyder and the miniaturized radio equipment and the garotte.
She wasn't Italian, despite her fluent command of the language and her name and title. She was American. She'd been born Penelope Worthington, one of the Philadelphia Worthingtons. Her father was somewhere near the top of Main Line society. On her mother's side she was descended from the Boston aristocracy. She was raised in a world of horses and formal dances and concerts and genteel sports like fencing and archery. The closest she'd come to the deadly world of spies and intrigue and sudden death was the novels she liked to read — Ambler and Buchan and Fleming and le Carre and her favorite, Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel. She never dreamed she'd be a spy herself. Or a Baroness.
The title — and the fortune that went with it — came from her second husband, the Baron Reynaldo St. John-Orsini. His family tree had roots in both the Italian and English aristocracy.
But Reynaldo hadn't been stuffy. Far from it. He was a handsome rakehell, fond of violent physical sports. Penelope had been more than a mate; she'd joined him — sometimes competed with him — in his favorite pursuits of skydiving, water-skiing, scuba diving, racing powerful autos over dangerous courses in the Grand Prix competitions.
One of the races had killed him. He had been half her existence. She couldn't go back to her former life of vapid international beauty, fashion model, society hostess. She wanted to do something useful. Something dangerous.
And she knew what to do about it.
Her first husband, John Stanton Marlowe, had had a hush-hush job in the Department of Defense. It wasn't until after he'd died, in the mysterious crash of his private jet, that she'd learned that he had been one of the top dogs in the United States intelligence establishment; that all the charming friends she'd entertained in their Washington home did things with the CIA and DIA and NSA and the rest of the alphabet.
But the different agencies in the alphabet soup got in one another's way. Sometimes they even killed one another's agents. There was a need for a small, reliable organization that wasn't vulnerable to interagency security leaks.
She planned her campaign. She made herself useful to American intelligence, acting as courier, arranging meetings between important people who weren't supposed to know one another, helping high-ranking Communist agents to defeat. They were anxious to use her. It wasn't every day you could get the services of a wealthy, beautiful member of the international set who had a good excuse for crossing borders, and who knew everybody worth knowing. And whose first marriage made her a member in good standing of the very exclusive club that controlled America's spy network.
She found one powerful, discreet man she could trust. He had clout at NSA. He had the ear of the President. He got things done without having to reveal the identity of the person they were being done for.
John Farnsworth was picked to set up the outfit. He was known only as Key — even to the NSA officials he was supposed to be working for. They channeled funds to him, honored his requisitions. But they didn't know who he was.
It took Farnsworth a year to set it up and make it look legitimate. It was a company called International Models, Inc. Fifty-one percent of the stock was owned by the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini. She was a famous model in her own right, better known than the Countess Christina Paolozzi, who also had modeled for Harper's Bazaar, or the Princess Luciana Pignatelli, who was doing commercials for television. International Models, Inc. made money. The books could stand anyone's checking. In the meantime, Farnsworth quietly assembled the eight agents who would be entrusted with the Baroness's secrets. They, too, could stand anyone's checking. The models, the electronics genius named Tom Sumo — all had been on the payroll of NSA or CIA. Skytop and Wharton already had made a name for themselves as a photography team before they joined the Green Berets. Farnsworth plucked them, one by one, from the organizations they worked for. There were no protests.
The Baroness was a unique tool: a precision instrument among the blunt and often clumsy implements that carried on the country's intelligence operations. Coin began to acquire an ingroup reputation; CIA secretly set up an entire subsection to work at the problem of solving Coin's identity.
Penelope finished packing the last of her kit: Sumo's elec
tronic pills went into her vanity case; the shoes and the memory-plastic sandal straps went into her shoebag. There was nothing more she could do until tomorrow morning's flight to Hong Kong.
She yawned — not with boredom, but with the suppressed excitement that makes a she-wolf yawn before a kill. She felt alive, marvelously alive. The prospect of action, of movement, of danger, had set every nerve ending atingle. There wasn't the slightest possibility of sleeping tonight.
There were better things to do than sleep.
She picked up the phone and dialed. A male voice answered.
"Hello, halfback," she said. "I promised you a return game. Pick me up in an hour."
* * *
"You're kidding!" Brian said.
Penelope stretched, her body smooth and creamy against the satin sheets. "I never joke about sex, darling."
"It'll be clumsy as hell."
"It won't be clumsy, darling. I promise you."
He shook his head doubtfully. "You know, you could get hurt."
"Let me worry about that." She reached over and took his penis in her hand. It was heavy and substantial, even deflated as it was now. It was like handling a slack length of fire hose. It was still sticky with their mingled juices from the last time they'd balled.
They were lying naked in the middle of Brian's heart-shaped bed. It was custom-made, at least twelve feet wide. He'd parted the legs of half the female population of Hollywood on top of it. A heart-shaped mirror hung from the ceiling above it, gold-framed and matching the bed in size. There were pink cherubs surrounding it. Brian was a romantic.
"We'll have to move to the living room." He looked around the thirty-foot bedroom. "There isn't enough room in here."
"I'm ready when you are." She shifted her grip to the base of his organ and wiggled it. It flopped around, but seemed to be growing a little bigger. "As soon as we set up the goalpost."
He laughed. "Take it easy, Baroness. We just scored a touchdown ten minutes ago. Our fourth."
"We've hardly begun, darling," she said. "I have full confidence in the Brian York legend." She moved her grip back and forth along the length of his drooping cock and was rewarded by a slight stiffening.
"We're on our way, doll," he said. "Keep it up."
She began to work the foreskin over the glans. He gave a deep rumble of pleasure. She shifted her hand to his balls and warmed them in her palm. The dangling hose heaved itself into the air and aimed, straight as an arrow, at the heart on the ceiling.
"Game time," he said.
He sat up, hairy as a bear, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Penelope leaned on her elbow and watched his thick, muscular form as he walked to the closet with that easy swagger that had become so familiar to television's football viewers.
He disappeared inside the walk-in closet. A moment later he poked his head out.
"Everything?" he said.
"Everything, darling. Except that plastic cup thing you football players wear over your treasures."
He grinned. "The toolbox, you mean?" He went back inside. She could hear him rummaging around.
"Do hurry, Brian," she said. "I'm positively dripping with anticipation."
He emerged in full uniform, the helmet under his arm. The shoulder pads gave him a wide, apish look. His thighs, calves, and forearms bulged under the tight fabric; a big 99 was emblazoned on chest and sleeves. At the unlaced crotch, his eight-inch penis stuck straight out like an axe handle.
"Put the helmet on," she ordered.
He touched the face guard. "But we won't be able to kiss."
"We have more interesting things to do than kiss."
He put the helmet on. The bars across the face gave him a passing resemblance to a man in a suit of armor.
She inspected him critically. "Now get the ball."
"Hey, you're really serious about going through with this?"
"Utterly serious, darling. You pass, I receive."
He reached a brawny arm into the closet and with a quick flip tossed a football to Penelope. Quick as a spring she jerked to a sitting position and caught the ball between two capable white hands, its point coming to rest between her breasts.
"Hey!" he said, "good catch!"
She snapped the ball toward him and was on the floor, barefoot, before it reached him. She crouched and ran, her breasts swinging, and hit him in the midriff with one shoulder.
He reached down and tousled her hair. "Lady, you play rough."
"Let's go, halfback." She grasped him by the eight-inch haft and pulled him along after her to the living room. It was a vast oval-shaped room, fifty feet long, with two crystal chandeliers and ornate gilt-and-white furniture. The chairs and sofas were still pushed back against the walls, after his last party, leaving an open space in the middle.
Brian looked wistfully at the crystal chandeliers and at the priceless Oriental rug his cleats were digging into, and said, "What the hell!" He trotted with the ball to the far end, his swollen tool bobbing in front of him like a springboard.
Penelope crouched facing him across the room, her hands resting splayed on her knees. She looked like some wild dryad, her dark hair tousled around her perfectly chiseled ivory face, her breasts with their protruding nipples mimicking two halves of an impossibly white football.
"You call the signals," he said.
She waggled her projecting rear, and he drew back his arm and tossed. It flew toward her, traveling high. Penelope sprang, her arms stretched upward, and plucked the ball out of the air. She was running, bent low, as soon as her heels hit the floor. She could feel the thick pile of the rug against her soles, then Brian was looming in front of her like a human mountain, the mask hiding his features.
She hit him low, and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Brian reached for a breast, got the ball instead. He fell back, off-balance. She pushed against the numerals on his chest for leverage and, with a deft wiggle, sat on top of the jutting pole coming out of his pants. It slid into her easily, all the way, greased by the excitement that was possessing her. Brian's eyes, behind the steel bars of the face guard, widened in surprise, and sudden pleasure. Before he could do anything about it, she lifted herself off his mast and ran back to the other end of the room.
He lay there, left holding the ball, his stem slick with her vaginal juices. "Hey!" he complained, getting to his feet. He took a step forward.
"You don't make a touchdown without throwing a pass," she said. She went into a crouch again.
He shook his head admiringly. "You're not a tight end, that's for sure," he said. He drew back an arm like a tree limb and spun the football at her again.
He'd put extra force into it and given it a corkscrew to discourage her from continuing the game. It slammed into her belly with a thwack and was immediately imprisoned by her strong fingers. Penelope laughed. She'd taken worse slams in the belly than that while working out with Skytop in the gym.
He was ready for her this time. He shouldered her in in the shins as she closed with him. She went head over heels, the ball spinning from her grasp. Instantly he was on top of her, the leather shoulder guards pinning her down, hard against her flesh, the rubber knee guards forcing her legs apart.
She let him enter her again. He pushed his throbbing shaft into her with a convulsive movement and let it stay where it was while he raised himself on his elbows and looked down at her, a crooked grin showing behind the steel bars.
"Now we ride it out, dig?"
Penelope was tempted. She could feel the thick pipe inside her, pulsing with his blood. There was an answering flutter from her scabbard, sending sweet ripples up her spine. She moved in and out a couple of times to tease the flutters into a preliminary throb or two. Then, with a powerful shrug of her whole body that caught him by surprise, she rolled out from under him. He was left on his elbows and knees, the big harpoon sticking forward like a giant's finger, dripping from its brief dip inside her.
He sighed and got to his feet. His penis was an angr
y red now, and twitching. His face, what she could see of it behind its grille, had grown red too. He trotted to the far end of the room again, his movements shaky.
Penelope taunted him with her body, lifting her breasts with both hands and thrusting them forward. Her hips undulated in a slow oval. She parted her exquisite lips and curled up her tongue.
He groaned. "Baroness, you're killing me." He hoisted the ball to shoulder level, his whole arm trembling, and threw.
It tumbled out of control in a high arc and crashed into one of the chandeliers. There was a crash and a tinkling rain of crystal.
He shook his head ruefully. "Baroness, you just cost me four thousand bucks."
"Nobody said I came cheap," she said. She took a few steps and picked up the ball. Holding it under her arm, nestled against one swelling breast, she ambled provocatively toward him.
He met her halfway. He took the football from her and tossed it over his shoulder. Wordlessly they sank down together on the thick rug.
She pushed her face up against the iron mask. Her tongue flicked between the bars. His tongue came out to meet it. They dueled for a minute or two, then Penelope withdrew her tongue to see how far he could follow. His chin was jammed up against the lower bar. His reach was surprising.
"See, it isn't impossible after all," he said.
Penelope pushed at the back of the helmet. "Oh, Brian, would you?" she said. The helmet slid down the length of her body. The leather and cold steel pressed against the insides of her thighs. The tongue came out, questing, and found the distended burl of her clitoris. Expertly he circled it with his hot tongue, lapping outward as if it were an ice cream cone. She shivered with pleasure. He got his hands under her buttocks and began pushing her toward him in rhythm. The steel dug into her, surrounding that zone of intense pleasure. An orgasm caught her by surprise. She moaned and shuddered. He stopped, disappointed.
"Keep going, darling," she gasped. "We're not through yet."
He resumed work. She waited until he had coaxed her to the verge again, then twisted away from him. The helmet rose. Eyes looked at her questioningly.
