The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  Precisely at the appointed time, a knock on Brandt’s door informed him that his agent was there. He opened the door and smiled. Marissa was like a daughter to him, as were the others. She stepped inside and gave him a warm embrace.

  After exchanging pleasantries for ten minutes or so she got right to the point. “What’s the mission, boss?”

  Brandt quickly explained what had happened to Rex, leaving his name out of the narrative. It was inevitable that the male agents would learn of each other, but the women were kept segregated from them simply as a precaution. The names of their distant male teammates were on a need-to-know basis, like when they had to work together as a couple. Rex had never been teamed with a female agent, so his name would have meant nothing to Marissa. All she needed to know was that he was one of CRC’s, and he’d been killed in an operation that went south because of betrayal. Brandt didn’t even share his hopes that Rex hadn’t been killed at all.

  He finished by telling her Carson’s name and position.

  “I strongly suspect that he was the last link in the chain of betrayal. I want him brought down, and I want the names of the people who were pulling his strings. I strongly suspect he’s dirty. You need to get the evidence for me.”

  “What’s the dirt?” she asked.

  “How much do you know about the BDSM scene?” Brandt countered.

  Marissa’s eyes twinkled. “Enough. Am I the dom or the submissive?”

  Brandt’s blush gave away his discomfort with the subject. But he forged on, aware that he’d have to be uncomfortable or abandon the idea altogether. “I’d never put you in a submissive role, Marissa. It seems Carson likes to be punished. Let’s give him what he wants, though not in the way he’s accustomed to. However, if you’re at all uncomfortable with the assignment, I can ask one of the other agents or come up with a different plan.”

  “Why, John, I don’t think you’ve ever given me a choice before! Tell me, will I get to wear a leather bustier and brandish a whip? I’ve always fancied that.” She laughed as he blushed even brighter. “Seriously, I can do it. But how will I introduce myself?”

  Brandt went on to explain the club and its setup. “It may take a while to establish yourself in the club, but we can help with that. Once you make a connection with Carson, you’ll wear a hidden camera and microphone. Then we’ll blackmail him with it to reveal his controllers.”

  “Piece of cake, seriously. When do I get started?”

  “No time like the present,” Brandt answered. “I assume you’ll have some research to do? Meanwhile, we’ll look for a way to get you membership in the club.”

  Marissa smiled seductively. “I’ll never tell, John. But I’ll be ready whenever you have paved the way.”

  After Marissa left, John wiped his forehead with his pocket square. He couldn’t help but wonder whether Marissa had been teasing him or had revealed more about herself than he wanted to know. She’d always fancied that?

  IT WASN’T THAT hard to finagle an invitation for Marissa in one of her cover personas to join the club. As it turned out, they were actively recruiting female members, and Marissa’s alter ego was the perfect candidate. Posing as a self-made millionaire, head of a cyber-research firm, she exuded grace, wealth, and a benevolent streak. That she was beautiful was merely the icing on the cake. Within a week, she was confirmed as a member and established the habit of eating lunch at the club daily.

  Within a second week, she’d been approached obliquely by platinum members, who expertly gauged her interest in the illicit activities of their club-within-a-club. Marissa played coy, but she passed some secret selection process with flying colors. Ten days after her meeting with Brandt, she was able to report to him that she’d be initiated into the platinum group on the following evening.

  “Be careful,” was his response.

  The next night, Marissa dressed carefully for her initiation. She’d been given no instructions other than to present herself for dinner at nine that night. When she arrived for the assignation, she wore an outwardly conservative little black dress, cut just low enough in front to be correct but suggestive. Red four-inch spike heels complemented the outfit, along with a black velvet clutch, beaded in jet and garnet. Inside the clutch was a hidden microphone, which she switched on when she saw a debonair man approaching her table.

  “Are you dining alone, my dear? How is that possible for such an exquisite creature?” the charmer asked.

  Reacting in kind, Marissa gave him her most brilliant smile. “Perhaps not, now,” she answered. “Won’t you join me?”

  “I have a better idea. Why don’t you join me? I have a private spot with a special menu,” he answered. His brown eyes were intense as they stared into hers.

  “I’d be delighted,” Marissa answered.

  The stranger led her to a discreet elevator and pressed a remote control. The elevator had no visible buttons. Marissa’s smile faltered only a bit as she contemplated what might await her. Was it a trap, or had she pulled off the act she’d been practicing for the past ten days?

  When the elevator came to a stop at last, her guide ushered her out with a hand at the small of her back. “Welcome to Underworld,” he said dramatically. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Three people stepped forward to greet her – one man and two women, both dressed in similar fashion to her choices. Marissa mentally congratulated herself on her intuition. The man pressed a curious black button into her hand.

  “This operates the elevator. Feel free to use it whenever you like.”

  Marissa favored him with one of her brilliant smiles. “Thank you.”

  Then both men excused themselves, and the women took Marissa on a tour of the facility. She met no one else that night, which suited her. It was all she could do to hide her revulsion at their idea of ‘entertainment’. At the end of the tour, one of the women asked her preference. As scripted, she made her selection. The women then took her to the suite of rooms reserved for those activities and left her in a setting made to look like an intimate nightclub.

  “It’s up to you to make new friends here,” the women told her. “You may approach anyone in this room, or you may wait for them to approach you. The only rule is that there are no names, and if you recognize someone, you will not disclose their membership here, ever. Naturally, the existence of this level is a secret, as is your membership. Do you understand?”

  Marissa nodded. She managed a salacious smile. “I’m going to enjoy this membership. Thank you for having me.”

  The women melted away with smiles of their own and best wishes. Marissa was left alone at a table in the dim light of the nightclub. Mentally, she reviewed the pictures of Bruce Carson she’d been shown. If he wasn’t here tonight, her intention was to decline any invitations she received on the grounds that she was new and just wanted to observe. If he showed up, she’d wait for him to approach her. Otherwise, whatever resulted could be viewed as entrapment. From what she’d heard, she wanted the evidence she produced to be unassailable, even in court.

  Carson’s vice was not, strictly speaking, illegal. The practice, she’d learned in her research, involved an exchange of power between consenting adults. The submissive desired punishment, but the dominatrix was bound by the limits the submissive placed on it. There might or might not be sexual behavior attached to the punishment. She was prepared to cross that bridge, or not, when she came to it. Her horror at the idea that a man in such a powerful position, literally responsible for keeping America safe from its enemies and with the lives of hundreds of agents in his hands, both official CIA operatives and the agents of private military contractors like CRC’s, could be as corrupt as Brandt suspected, led to her determination that she’d do whatever it took to bring him down.

  That night, Carson did not appear. It gave Marissa the opportunity to observe the interactions in the nightclub-like room and learn how to interact when Carson made his appearance. The next night, she’d know a little better how to draw Carson
in, and she’d be there every night until she got the opportunity.

  ON THE THIRD night she sat in an out-of-the way alcove nursing a single drink, she noticed a slender man dressed impeccably in a well-tailored suit approaching her table. As he passed into one of the pools of muted light from a down-light ceiling can, she recognized him as her target.

  Lights, camera, action.

  She casually pressed the mic switch in her clutch before he reached her table.

  Without asking permission, Carson pulled out a chair and seated himself. “You’re new,” he stated.

  “I am, and hello,” she answered, allowing a small smile to twitch her lips.

  “Here to play?” he asked.

  “That depends on the game,” she replied. Now her grin was broader. It wouldn’t matter what the game was – she already knew she could beat him at it.

  Carson leaned forward and spoke in a lower tone. “I’ve been a bad boy.”

  Matching the drop in his register, Marissa leaned forward as well, putting her face within inches of his. “Have you now?” she asked.

  “Yes. Very, very bad. Why, if my mother knew how bad, she’d spank me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not your mother.” Marissa leaned back, breaking the connection. As she’d expected, a desperate look flashed in his eyes.

  “You could, if you wanted,” he stammered, “punish me anyway?”

  “If I wanted,” she answered coolly. She glanced at her nails, recently lengthened with acrylic and painted blood red, playing hard to get.

  Carson’s glance followed her own. “I think my mother would be grateful…” he whispered.

  “I suppose I could,” she said. The dance continued for another ten minutes, during which Marissa noted Carson becoming more and more desperate.

  Finally, she agreed, and he eagerly ushered her to a private suite accessed through a second door and down a long hallway. Idly, she wondered how this warren of secret passages and rooms could have been built below the much smaller building that housed the main club. The suite they entered contained all the implements of punishment she’d read about. Now she would learn if her research had been sufficient, and if she could channel the revulsion she felt into the strict and cold persona she had to become to perform her duty.

  In the room of the suite that was reserved for dressing for her role, she found an array of costumes. She almost laughed at the leather bustier, but she was wearing her own under her conservative dress, along with the accoutrements. Hers included a hidden camera in the bow on top of the lacing. Just before she opened the door to the room where the main event would take place, she checked her appearance in the mirror.

  She’d pulled back her hair in a severe bun, darkened the red lipstick, and removed her dress to reveal an outfit that she thought made her look like Cat Woman, or some other sexy female superhero. Her red, four-inch, spike heels gleamed against the black stockings. She’d had to practice breathing in the bustier, which nipped her waist in to the point where breathing happened only lung-deep, as her diaphragm was too constricted. That further enhanced her figure by pushing up her bosom with each breath she took. Her outfit was no less modest than a one-piece swimsuit, but it suggested wanton sex.

  There had been no discussion of sex play accompanying the punishment. But Marissa knew that because she was the dominant, it would be up to her, not Carson. And she had absolutely no intention of doing so.

  Tonight’s video would have to capture every humiliation she’d heap on him, because she wasn’t about to do this a second time.

  She stepped out of the dressing room, ready to perform the acting job of her life.

  “What’s your safe word?” she asked.

  34

  New Delhi, India, June 30, 5:00 p.m.

  IT HAD BEEN three days since Rex and Digger arrived in New Delhi, and Rex was anxious to be gone out of the city that made him feel like he was a sardine in a can. But only today had the forger deigned to meet him to obtain the details he’d need to produce his identity papers.

  Rex thought long and hard about setting up a Facebook and other social media accounts as part of his new legend. But he had to think about the ramifications of that very carefully. Not only was it going to be a challenge to create believable content that went back for a decade or so; there was also the matter of getting backdated photos. The last time a picture was taken of him was when he was in the Marines. In Delta Force he had to remain anonymous, not to even mention the secrecy required by CRC.

  For now, it was best to be one of those, what some would call, unfortunate souls wandering through life deprived of a Facebook or any social media account. At least he had a Gmail account.

  In the meantime, Rex mined Usama’s hard drives for intelligence about the people involved in his drug trade and other enterprises and for access to the wealth he knew was hidden somewhere on there.

  The little black book of passwords was both helpful and frustrating. Usama had used a code of his own devising to disguise which passwords went with which websites. Rex had to test them in sequence, building a spreadsheet on his own laptop to keep them sorted. And to avoid discovery by the websites’ security measures, he had to spoof his IP address with each attempted entry, keeping track of that, as well, in his soon-to-be massive spreadsheet. Working his way through all the information was going to take a long time, but that’s one of the things his new life gave him — time.

  He’d determined what he should be feeding Digger and had acquired it, but Digger had grown accustomed to the people food he preferred and balked at eating what Rex had to admit looked rather unappealing.

  To keep from starving the poor dog, he relented more often than he should have and shared what he had ordered for himself but mixed it in with Digger’s dry food, so he had to eat some of his own food to get to the tastier bits. Rex had read that dogs wouldn’t truly starve themselves, any more than picky children would. In essence, dogs were scavengers, they would eat anything they could get hold of. However, not all human food was good for them, and it was up to their humans to make sure they didn’t get the unhealthy stuff such as chocolates, candy, grapes and raisins, dairy products, and much more.

  But it was difficult, almost impossible, to resist the pitiful entreaties Digger was capable of making just with his accusatory expressions.

  He hadn’t come to the conclusion that he actually liked Digger unreservedly. At least, he hadn’t admitted it to himself, yet. But he suspected that an observer would assume the dog was very important to him. After all, he’d allowed Digger to sleep with him on the bed, or rather, maybe it was Digger who allowed him to sleep there. He was constantly checking with the dog to be certain his needs were met, and of course there was the issue of the food. He also conversed constantly with the dog, a result of having very little commerce with people during this waiting period.

  35

  Washington, DC, July 1, 2014 8 a.m.

  BRANDT HAD WOKEN early and treated himself to a room service breakfast before showering and dressing for the day. He paced as he waited for Marissa’s report.

  Had Carson shown his face at the club last night?

  Brandt devoutly hoped so. He was tired of the city, tired of hotel food, and tired of restraining himself from going and choking the life out of that lowlife, Carson.

  He couldn’t wait to get back home to Arizona, where he knew everyone he saw on a daily basis, and knew they were of unassailable character. He hated DC. Rubbing shoulders with slimy politicians, even slimier lobbyists, and apathetic pen-pushing bureaucrats every day was irritating and made him want to take several showers a day.

  He knew it was too early to hear from Marissa. She’d have waited for Carson until at least two a.m. when the upstairs club closed. If her target showed, she’d have been busy for the next hour or two. But Brandt had absolutely nothing else to do. His email correspondence was caught up. It was only five a.m. at his Arizona headquarters, so people would be just now tumbling out of
bed for their daily exercise.

  So, he paced.

  He figured he’d probably walked a couple of miles’ worth of wear in the hotel suite carpet when the phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me. I’m downstairs. You decent?” Marissa spoke breathlessly, like she’d been running.

  “Yes! Of course! Come on up.”

  When he opened the door, Brandt took note of Marissa’s heightened color. She was still breathing fast, but her smile told him it was good news. She walked straight into his arms, squeezed his upper body in a vice-grip hug, and kissed his cheek.

  “I’ve got it. My lord, that was nauseating and a whole lot of fun!”

  Catching her jubilant mood, Brandt smiled broadly, as well. “Sit down and tell me all about it,” he urged.

  “Coffee first. Got any?”

  Brandt had ordered coffee with his breakfast, but the carafe was empty. “I’ll have some sent up. Come on, spill it.”

  He jabbed the room service button on the hotel phone and barked, “Coffee, and please make it quick!”

  Instead of telling him, Marissa pulled a flash drive from her purse and handed it to Brandt without a word. Now it was she pacing as he logged in to his laptop and placed the flash drive in the port. Brandt didn’t know whether her anxiety was about the coffee or about what he was going to see in the files she’d brought him. If he hadn’t been so anxious to see them himself, he might have teased her by delaying.

  Instead, he sat down and accessed the files. He skipped the text document and went straight to the video. It began with a view of Carson’s back, one arm extended toward the camera.

  “That’s when he was leading me from the meeting room to the private suite,” Marissa explained. She went on to tell him how the interior of the underground rooms was set up, since he hadn’t read the report first. By the time she finished, the camera showed them entering the private suite, and Carson turned around. The camera angle was bad – it showed only his torso.