The Best Laid Plans

by Troy Conway

  Walrus-moustache, from his analysis of the information he had at his fingertips, suspected a segment of the French people as being the brains behind HECATE. Maybe they had used Communist money to get started, but now they were pretty much self-sustaining. Maybe they were entirely independent of Communism. Nobody knew for sure. It was my job to find out.

  Official France had no hand in HECATE. The chief was pretty damn certain about this. It was an independent crowd of Frenchmen, out to make money and usurp power, to make American and British diplomats look like bumbling idiots, to throw monkey wrenches into our statesmanship plans, to control by radio transmission the acts of individuals in high places so as to achieve the ends they had in mind.

  HECATE would have kept an eye on Rhea Carson to make sure she killed herself. They would also know Professor Rod Damon had saved her life. Walrus-moustache had given the story of my rescue to the newspapers. HECATE would be out gunning for me, by this time. Walrus-moustache said he didn’t think they wanted to kill me. The paper had given a list of my exploits as head of the L.S.D. HECATE would want to take control of my talents to do its dirty work, he was sure.

  I hoped he was right

  If they wanted me dead, I was a sitting duck.

  The French police would assist me, if necessary. So would the Coxe Foundation in Paris. I had a counter-transistor in me to negate the effects of the stimulator that would be put inside my head. Everything was coming up roses, according to plan. The way Walrus-moustache looked at it, I was on a vacation.

  The Air France jet took off on time.

  We were half an hour over the ocean when a stewardess in her baby blue uniform and pert cap brought me a martini. I sipped it, relaxing while I considered ways and means. Obviously, since I couldn’t be sure the opposition had its eye on me, I must make certain I attracted their attention.

  So when the stewardess came for my empty glass, I struck up a conversation. I told her I was on a holiday, that I was out for kicks, that money was no object. Could she tell me where I could find fun and games in gay Paree?

  She could not, that was not part of her job. Her eyes twinkled as she told me this, she was très sympathetique, she would have liked to help but airline policy forbade.

  “I respect that policy,” I told her. “But you aren’t working all the time. You must get some time off—like, after you report in when the flight is over. You’re on your own then.”

  “I shall see, m’sieu,” was all I could get out of her. As I watched her bottom wriggle off down the aisle under her tight baby blue skirt, I told myself I damn well would get more out of this little French chick.

  Rhea had told me she had been taken sick at the Ane d’Or restaurant. Apparently, then, the opposition had agents planted in the Golden Ass eaterie. The Ane d’Or would be my first port of call when I went clattering about the Paris night spots.

  I figured the stewardess would be a good cover for my activities, if I could inveigle her into going out on the town with me. I set myself to win her over. When I slipped a tip under my dishes at dinnertime, I made sure it was a ten-dollar bill.

  Her thin black brows rose at sight of the sawbuck. She made a motion to hand it back to me, but suddenly her green eyes laughed and she tucked it up under her sleeve, bending forward to hide her action from curious eyes.

  “You are a very silly man,” she whispered. “I do not accept bribes.”

  “Ah, you must be married,” I said confidently. “Your husband would beat you if he caught you with money of your on.”

  I had seen no wedding ring, no engagement ring. She flushed faintly and tossed her head. “I am not married. Nor engaged. I am my own woman.”

  An independent sort. There would be no entanglements, then. I said casually, “I’m going to hire a car when I get to Paris. I have a couple of weeks free time and I want to spend it doing fun things. I really do need a companion. You see, I suffer from monophobia.”

  She whisked off down the aisle, buttocks jerking, a puzzled look on her face. I could see her whispering to the other stewardesses, and they all kept glancing at me from time to time. At least I had attracted attention on the plane. Now if I could do the same thing in Paris. . . .

  “Would you like a pill, m’sieu?” asked my stewardess.

  “A pill? Why should I want a pill?”

  “If you are ill, you take a pill.”

  I smiled. “Monophobia doesn’t mean I’m sick. It means I’m afraid of—a certain thing.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I’ll tell you tonight, if you’ll go out with me.”

  Her green eyes were puzzled. She stared down at me, drew a deep breath—I got the impression of upstanding breasts under her white blouse—and sighed. She shook her head, on which the Air France cap was perched, and shrugged her shoulders with Gallic fatalism.

  “I think you are a very naughty man, m’sieu,” she announced finally. “And you have an approach that is very unique.”

  “I’m a very shy man.”

  “Ha! You are a papillon.”

  A libertine? Well, maybe. I just winked at her.

  I noticed that all the other stewardesses eyed me slyly as they went back and forth. I began to feel like Bluebeard. I also noticed that a small, dapper man in a pin-stripe suit was looking at me from time to time with something like cold speculation in his eyes. I felt like a turkey being assayed for the chopping block. Maybe I was getting the attention I wanted.

  The rest of the flight was uneventful.

  Over Orly Airport, my stewardess bent to whisper, “I’ll meet you in the waiting room, m’sieu—after you have collected your luggage. I want to return your ten-dollar bill.”

  She was sitting on a lounge chair with her legs crossed. She had good legs. I would have noticed her even if I didn’t have a date to meet her. She smiled as I made a little bow.

  “I have a taxi waiting, mam’selle,” I announced. “It will deliver me to the Plaza-Athénéé hotel. But before it does, it will permit me to see you to your home.”

  She nodded and fell into step beside me.

  Yvette Crillaire lived in a small apartment house on the Left Bank, not far from the Jardin des Plantes. She was very determined I should not see her to her rooms, pleading the fact that she needed a long hot bath and a nap. So I settled for a date at eight that night, during which she would show me the parts of Paris a tourist rarely sees.

  She hesitated, then asked, “This monophobia. What is it?”

  “A mortal fear of being alone,” I smiled. “That’s why I need a companion. Oh, by the way, a friend of mine told me about the Ane d’Or. Is it the ‘in’ thing to go there? I was advised not to miss it.”

  “We shall see it, yes. And one or two other places.” Her green eyes were overbright. “I think you are the libertine, m’sieu. So I am going to assume you might like the naughty show, hein? The one held in a cellar club?”

  “You assume right, honey,” I nodded, figuring that HECATE would prefer to get in its dirty work in dimly lighted, out-of-the-way bistros rather than in a place like the Folies Bergère.

  I patted her behind as she stepped past me to the sidewalk. Her giggle sounded as promising as her soft buttocks felt. Her gloved fingertips waved me a farewell as the taxi rocketed away from the curb.

  The Plaza-Athénée is one of the better hotels in Paris, though not in the class of the Ritz or the Crillon. Since I do not like to wear a tie at all times, and since the Ritz, for one, insists on this bit of frou-frou, I had selected the hotel on the Avenue Montaigne.

  However, I did splurge a bit in the selection of my rooms. They were located on the top floor, one of those new and yacht-like suites with low ceilings and a price tag of over seventy dollars a day. It was Coxe Foundation money, so I treated myself right. Besides, the restaurant here is one of the finest hotel eateries in all Paris.

  Like the girl I was dating that night, I took a hot bath and slept until after five in the afternoon. The time difference between
Europe and the States always leaves me woozy. I shook that wooziness between the sheets.

  At eight sharp I was on the Rue Larrey, stepping out of the taxi to pick up Yvette Crillaire. I had a bottle of Lentheric perfume in one hand and two dozen long-stemmed roses in the other. I was determined to overwhelm my pretty stewardess with attention.

  Unfortunately it was not Yvette who opened her apartment door, but her roommate, a girl with long tawny hair and blue eyes. She had a mini-skirted cocktail dress out of which her bare shoulders and upper breasts rose in a cloud of perfume.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized, stepping back so I could enter the tastefully furnished rooms, “but Yvette was summoned away by a long-distance phone call to visit her sick mother.”

  It was a horrendous excuse, but I bore up under it, confident that the blonde was here to substitute for her. I remembered the dapper man in the pin-stripe suit on the plane, and now I felt certain he was from HECATE. So too was—

  “My name is Claudette Marly,” she smiled.

  I made her a little bow and extended the perfume and the roses. Her look of surprise was enchanting. At least HECATE had done me the honor of baiting the hook with a real goody.

  “Pour moi?” she breathed.

  “In the absence of Yvette, and in the hope that you’ll consent to take her place. She was going to show me the naughtier side of Paris.”

  “Oh, I could do that,” she told me, blue eyes flirting at me over the two dozen roses. “I know very many bistros where the floor shows are quite exciting. You would wish one of those, hein?”

  “I would indeed,” I admitted.

  Her soft laughter told me she saw the way I was staring at her mounded breastflesh quivering naked above her low bodice. She shook her shoulders, making those coussins jiggle loosely. Her eyes flirted with mine when I took the time to look into their blue depths.

  She handed me her black velvet evening wrap to hold while she settled her smooth shoulders in it. Then her arm hooked mine and we were on our way.

  We dined at the Tour d’Argent on pressed duck, wine and champagne. This restaurant is perhaps the oldest eaterie in Paris, and its dining rooms overlook the Seine River and Notre Dame cathedral. It is a fabulous sight by night. When I could take my eyes off my companion and those breasts that threatened to pop into sight at any moment, I admired the view beyond the window.

  A four-thousand-franc gratuity to the maître d’ had assured us of a most excellent table under the maroon and white drapes, where one could stare at the lights of Paris. I watched respect creep into the eyes of Claudette Marly as I made certain this was going to be a night to be remembered.

  The condemned man ate a hearty meal, I was thinking as I savored the duck. We who are about to die, salute you. And all that jazz.

  For I was convinced little Claudette was from HECATE, and that before the evening was over, HECATE would strike at me.

  Until that moment, however, I was determined to have a good time. So after the tartes aux fraises for dessert, and excellent coffee, I guided my blonde beauty toward a taxi stand. I explained that the rest of the evening was at her discretion, and for her not to be too discreet.

  “We shall go to Les Choses d’Amour,” she announced firmly.

  “The arts of love,” I translated. “It sounds promising.”

  She giggled, “Oh, it isn’t known by that name alone. Just as l’Entrecote disguises itself behind the name of Relais de Venise, and the Chope d’Orsay under the title, Enjalbert, so the Love Arts is also called the Way of Life. There is a cellar attached to the upstairs restaurant. It is to the cellar we will go.”

  To the cellar we went, down a flight of narrow stairs in which the wooden treads were hollowed out by countless feet bound on the same sort of errand we were on this night. I got the feeling that Claudette Marly wanted to have herself a good time before turning me over to her bosses.

  The cellar was surprisingly clean, with tiny tables set with checkered tablecloths and lone candles. The candles gave off the only light in the bistro except for the spotlights on the small stage, that served also as a dance floor. Intimacy was the order of the day for Les Choses d’Amour.

  There was a show going on as we slipped between the tables. Two naked girls were in the last stages of a lesbian love-in, writhing and twisting about in the traditional soix-ante-neuf position. I stared at jellying buttocks and jiggling breasts while I fumbled for a chair.

  A pretty girl in an apron and high heels clicked those heels in our direction as she hurried toward us. There was nothing above or below the apron except bare girl.

  Claudette giggled, “She is pretty, yes?”

  I patted her bottom. “Almost as pretty as you, cherie.”

  “Two absinthes,” Claudette murmured.

  I blinked. Absinthe is a verboten drink in the States. To much of an aphrodisiac, or so they say. It has a sweet licorice taste, but it really hits you below the belt. Or where you live.

  “On the rocks,” I amended, hoping the ice would slow down the action. I didn’t want to lose my inhibitions too quickly.

  The girls on the couch in the spotlight were jerking furiously, heads caught between soft white thighs that rippled in orgasmic fury. I felt my mouth go dry. I needed no absinthe—the French call it Herbsaintes—to get me in the mood. There is a little of the voyeur in my makeup. I am geared to react to visual stimulation.

  But when the greenish liqueur was set before me, I sipped it. By this time the lesbians had run offstage and a girl with a French poodle attached to a strap sauntered out in their place.

  The girl was a redhead with very white skin and was quite pretty. Her costume consisted of shoes and stockings with a black garterbelt, with cuffs about her wrists, a collar of white pique at her neck, and a pert hat on her neatly coiffed red hair. Otherwise, she was stark naked. I gathered the cuffs and collar were to suggest she was fully dressed for boulevard strolling.

  The dog was excited. I realised it had been fed some drug, maybe even a bowl of absinthe. It kept sniffing at the stockinged legs of its mistress and trying to stand on its hind legs. Suddenly, I became aware of a second girl pacing forward out of the candlelit shadows.

  She was also a redhead and wore exactly the same garments as her twin. The only difference was that instead of a dog at the end of her leather leash there was a naked young man.

  As the dog acted, so did the man. He sniffed, he reared up, his tongue licked a soft thigh above the stockingtop. The redhead pushed him away as the other girl pushed the poodle. It was a well-rehearsed pantomime. It offered you a Bit of bestiality along with the besogne.

  The man was on his knees, the dog was on its hindlegs. Each was engaging in a bit of tongue-play on the two redheads. The women stood with heads thrown back, their hips jerking to involuntary spasms.

  You could hear the redheads breathing harshly, a panting that was echoed by damn near everybody in the cellar cafe. I know my breath was harsh, and Claudette was going like a bellows as she stared.

  I put a hand on her chair and slid it a few inches toward me. She did not take her eyes from the redheads, but her lips quirked in a tiny smile. The smile widened as my hand fell on her stockinged knee and slipped upward along her inner thigh.

  I had no qualms about such conduct in public, not in a bistro like Les Choses d’Amour. It was what you paid your francs for, this intimate informality. Out of the corner of my eye I could see other men fondling their girlfriends. One woman had her thighs spread so wide I could see up under her skirt and observe the fact that she wore no undergarments.

  My own hand was discovering the same thing about Claudette Marly. She was tightening her thighs on my hand, then loosening them in a steady rhythm which set up pulsations deep within her flesh. The feel of moist flesh plus the sight of the man and the animal in the dog collars and what they were doing to the redheaded girls was enough to make the absinthe bubble in my veins.

  The redheads were sitting on chairs on either side
of a table that had somehow replaced the couch where the lesbians had been performing. The women had their legs up on the table, crossed at their ankles. The audience had a good view of their snowy thighs and the lampes amoureuses between them.

  The man and the dog were very busy with those exposed parts. The women were trying to control their emotions, but those loving tongues were very expert. One girl was biting her lower lip hard, eyes wide.

  Claudette moaned, turning to catch my lips with hers, a hand at the back of my neck. Her hips jerked wildly against my hand for long moments. At the same time, her hand fell on my penart with a gentle grip.

  “Mon Dieu,” she breathed, “tu etes envitaille!”

  “Thanks, honey. Not only am I well hung, I’m something of a perpetual motion machine as well. You want to find out?”

  Her lips were quivering uncontrollably; at the moment she was beyond speech. I needed no other invitation. I swung her up onto my lap, raising her skirt to her pelvic bones. Her back was to me, in the seated Venus reversa position.

  She took me easily, hips grinding downward until I was a part of her. Then she commenced a gentle rotation that was pleasing but not exhausting. I stared over her bare shoulder at the show.

  The redheads were on their hands and knees on the long table, facing one another. The poodle was on its hind legs, the man was kneeling. All four performers were in violent motion.

  A woman was wailing somewhere. A man was shouting hoarsely. I could hear Claudette Marly making little sounds as she increased her own tempo. Between those throaty cries, I heard her apologizing.

  “I wanted to—make it last longer—but I cannot control myself,” she was sobbing. “I must—must—”

  The kneeling redheads and Claudette screamed at exactly the same moment. My arms were about the blonde French girl, holding her tightly, well aware that the cassenoisette action of her vaginal muscles was trying to coax me into the orgasmic spasm.