The planning went well, but Turgut was a strange man and gave me seedy looks throughout the session. On several occasions I caught him staring at my breasts and it was all I could do not to call him on it. When he left, I complained about it to Musgrave, who said that Turgut certainly wondered what I was all about, considering I would be seducing his friend as part of my mission. A woman spy willing to use her body in such a manner was nearly incomprehensible to him.
Twelve
The following evening I met Turgut at Kafe Sarıkedi and had to kill a half hour with him before Zeybeck would arrive. It was a painful task, as Turgut continued to gawk at my boobs and was beginning to pry into my private life. I tolerated his stares; in order to get Zeybeck’s attention, I’d worn a black leather skirt and a black tank top with spaghetti straps. Though I also wore a light cream-colored sweater, I was exposing quite a bit of cleavage. Back home, the look would be considered tame, but maybe in Turkey it was a little risque. Regardless, I looked sexy and felt confident, if nervous.
Luckily, the target showed up early and spared me some of the agony of being one-on-one with Turgut. The ploy Turgut had proposed to his friend was that he would be having dinner with his acquaintance from Paris when Zeybeck just happened to appear at the same restaurant. Turgut would insist his friend join us, then he’d receive a text from his wife and have to go, leaving Zeybeck and I alone. The rest would be up to Zeybeck, who would try to lure the slutty Western woman back to his home. Little did he know when he shook my hand and smiled that I was about as sure a thing as he was ever likely to encounter.
Unlike Turgut, Zeybeck was polite and shy. He was about six feet tall and quite thin, and while he wasn’t a model, he wasn’t ugly either. Still, had it not been my job, I wouldn’t have looked twice at him. The three of us ate dinner and conversed — with Zeybeck chain-smoking Turkish cigarettes even while eating — until Turgut’s phone dinged and he apologetically excused himself to go home, just as planned. Zeybeck and I continued conversing in French. Though his accent was heavier than Turgut’s, I found him easy to understand. Luckily, his French was subpar enough that he failed to notice my occasional slip-ups. He asked me about my writing and I asked him many questions about Turkish men and women, ostensibly for research regarding a character in my novel. For dessert, he suggested we have raki, a Turkish alcoholic drink with a licorice flavor that reminded me of sambuca.
My date was so much more restrained than Turgut had been that I couldn’t be certain we were headed in the right direction. I managed to secretly pour my second raki on the floor under the table without being detected, then pretended to loosen up under the effects of the alcohol. I made body contact a few times, touching Zeybeck’s arm or hand, and I also leaned forward a few times while laughing so he could catch a glimpse of cleavage. At one point I fished my lipstick out of my purse, applying it in a subtly seductive manner across my lips. When he insisted I have a third drink while he was still on his first, I knew I had him. My faking a buzz gave him the idea that three drinks would leave me helpless to his suggestions, while I knew that I wouldn’t have a problem handling the two I’d actually imbibed.
After that third drink Zeybeck still hadn’t made anything that even resembled a move, so I decided to test him. “I’d better get back to my hotel, Olin,” I said. I knew he wouldn’t risk being seen walking through a hotel lobby with a Western woman; it was less risky to sneak me into his house where there were fewer bystanders. To my surprise he didn’t try to talk me out of it, but paid the tab, helped me with my coat, and walked me out into the cold February night air.
“So is this goodnight, then?” I asked as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the cafe. I tried to slur my words a little. It helped that I was freezing.
“The night is still early,” he replied hesitantly. Bingo.
“What are you saying, Olin?” I asked coquettishly. When he didn’t respond fast enough, I didn’t want the moment to be lost and quickly added, “Are you suggesting we go to your place now?”
“That is one possibility,” he said. “If you aren’t ready to go to your hotel.” Damn, he was bad at this. Had this man ever been laid before?
I looked around and saw a small alcove in front of a door next to the cafe, hidden in shadows from the lights of the boulevard traffic. Grabbing Zeybeck’s hand, I led him there and kissed him hard, pressing myself against him. His beard and breath smelled of old tobacco, a scent that as a former smoker I’d grown to hate. He thankfully kept his tongue in his own mouth for now.
“I’m cold, Olin,” I whispered. “Take me home and warm me up.”
A little direct, perhaps, but he needed the nudge. Whatever; it did the trick. A short walk later, we entered Zeybeck’s home.
The house was small, though upscale and impeccably clean. More importantly, it was warm. I removed my coat and sweater the moment I entered, tossing them on a chair. As soon as the door closed, I threw my arms around Zeybeck, wrapping him up for another kiss. This time I felt his tongue and kissed back, despite the smoker’s breath. He was not a talented kisser, but I wasn’t there for a good time. As his hands roamed over my lower back, I scanned the living room area for a laptop and saw none.
“Mmmm,” I purred, still acting a bit drunk. “You should take me to your bed.”
He wordlessly led me to his adjoining bedroom. “Wait here,” he said as he returned to the living room. When he was gone, I glanced around the bedroom and saw the computer bag from the picture, sitting on an old wooden desk. The bag was shut, but I walked over and lifted the corner and felt the weight that let me know the laptop was inside. I didn’t dare inspect it just yet, so I walked away just as Zeybeck returned with two shot glasses.
“More raki,” he said.
I don’t trust my reflexes with three shots of a liqueur I’d never had before, but I accepted the glass with a sexy smile and put it to my lips for a tiny sip. I asked Zeybeck if I could use his bathroom and slipped inside to think things over. I didn’t know of any way I could get to the laptop unnoticed at that point and decided I would proceed as if I were actually on a date with my target and see where things led. Regardless of what happened between us, eventually he would have to leave the room for a moment so I could plant the cloner and get it started. With a plan in place, I poured two thirds of the raki down the drain. Emerging from the bathroom a moment later, I made a show of polishing off that final third in front of him.
“Let me get you another,” Zeybeck said immediately, apparently wanting me unconscious.
“No,” I mumbled, “I’m already drunk.” I then lifted my tank top over my head and dropped it on the floor. Zeybeck was stunned, no doubt unaccustomed to sexually assertive women. I approached him, thinking about whether he’d want to see a striptease. The look on his face told me I should dial it back a little and let him dictate how things went. Standing in front of him in my bra, I gazed up with the sexiest look I could muster and he responded by grabbing my waist and kissing me again. By now I was getting used to that stale-tobacco taste.
It took a while, but he finally worked his way up to my bra, actually circling behind me to unclasp it. When Zeybeck returned to my front, he glanced quickly at my naked breasts, then unzipped my skirt. While he did that, I brushed my hand across the front of his pants and found him already growing hard. When my skirt fell to my ankles, I decided to hurry things along and pulled my panties down, stepping out of my clothing and moving back a little to give him a look at my naked body. He sucked in a breath at the sight, a reaction I took as a compliment.
Trying not to seem rushed, I unbuttoned Zeybeck’s shirt and removed it. Damn, this man is skinny, I thought. When I reached for his belt, he stopped me. “Give me one moment,” he said, then turned and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
Seizing my big chance, I grabbed my purse and ran to his desk, unzipping his computer bag and reaching in to pull out the laptop. I retrieved the cloner from the false bottom of my lipstick. Work
ing as quickly as I could, I slid the cloner into the computer’s USB port and hit the power button. The cloner had a pinprick-sized LED on it that glowed red once it started its task, then would change to green when it had copied everything it could find. With no time to see if the red light came on, I shoved the computer back in the bag, leaving the screen cracked slightly so it wouldn’t power off. I’d only taken a step away from the desk when the bathroom door opened and out stepped Zeybeck holding a towel and a condom.
When I realized he was looking at the purse in my hands, I grinned, pulled out my own condom and shrugged. Then I dropped my purse on the floor, unbuckled Zeybeck’s belt and unzipped his pants, letting them fall to his ankles. He was now wearing only white cotton boxers and black socks and shoes. “Take off your shoes, Olin,” I implored and he complied, then finally slid his boxers down over his bony legs. He was mostly erect now, the head poking out from its foreskin. Taking it in my hand, I stroked him for a minute, then lay back on his bed and motioned for him to join me.
He turned off the lamp next to the bed and the room was plunged into darkness. I was startled to see a muted blue light behind Zeybeck, coming from within his computer bag — I hadn’t closed the bag and his laptop screen was glowing visibly from within.
“Let’s leave the light on,” I cooed, thinking quickly. “It’s so much sexier.”
He hesitated a moment, then the lamp flickered back on and the glowing laptop screen was no longer apparent. My pulse still racing, I breathed a sigh of relief as Zeybeck climbed up on the bed next to me. He made a couple of fumbling attempts at foreplay while I continued stroking him and soon had him standing at full attention. I picked up his condom, unsure whether to trust it; it was a Turkish brand and for all I knew had been in his bathroom drawer for years. I opened the package, eyeing the latex as I rolled it onto him. Then I positioned myself on the bed, spread my legs, and motioned for him to climb on top. He did, and unceremoniously pushed his way inside of me.
Zeybeck insisted on kissing me as we had sex, something I really didn’t care for much even when I was with a handsome non-smoker. I buried my face near his collarbone to get him to stop. Fortunately, his body smelled of some kind of soap I’d never smelled before, an exotic, masculine scent. I had hoped that he would come quickly, but that didn’t seem to be the case as he kept steadily thrusting. At one point I actually grew bored and began looking at the Bay of Izmir through the window near his desk. After a solid twenty minutes he still hadn’t so much as varied his pace, so I decided to try to hurry him along.
“Do you want me to get on top?” I asked sexily.
His reply was a very perfunctory “no” and I realized he didn’t want to relinquish his male control at all. What could I do?
Trying to appeal to his sense of male superiority. I wrapped my legs around him, tilting my hips up as I kissed him tenderly. Then every time he pushed into me, I purred softly. Again and again, letting my moans build as he started thrusting harder each time. After a while I felt confident that he was close and I moaned louder, pretending I was near orgasm. “Oui,” I breathlessly whispered into his ear. “Comme ça.”
My phony sounds of ecstasy must have done the trick. Zeybeck pushed into me hard several times as he came with a barely audible groan while I faked my own climax. A few seconds later he pulled out and headed to the bathroom, flushing the condom and returning immediately. The cloner had only been working for half an hour and Musgrave had told me to give it at least a full hour — ninety minutes if possible.
Zeybeck rejoined me in bed and we lay naked, me softly stroking the hair on his chest as we talked. He refrained from playing with my body, barely even looking at it. That was fine with me; I didn’t want to get him excited again if I didn’t have to. Somehow I managed to keep that man talking for nearly an hour. We discussed my book, with me simply regurgitating plot points from a romance novel I’d recently finished, transposing the setting from Italy to Turkey.
I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever get a chance at retrieving the cloner when Zeybeck politely excused himself and went to the restroom, closing the door behind him. I leaped out of bed, opened the computer bag and looked at the cloner. The tiny light was glowing red, but I didn’t know if I’d get another opportunity and decided to remove it.
Before I could do so I heard the bathroom doorknob and shoved the laptop back in the bag just as the door swung open. Zeybeck walked toward me, a puzzled look on his face. No doubt he wondered what his naked guest was doing standing at his desk.
“Olin, what is that?” I asked, distracting him by pointing out the nearby window to the first thing I saw, a blinking light on the Bay of Izmir.
“That is the light to guide the ships. It blinks all night.”
Great, I’d adverted one crisis, but I still had to get that cloner out of the computer and get out of Zebeck’s apartment. I also had a naked Turkish man standing right in front of me and needed to create a reason for him to go back into that bathroom again.
Then I had an idea that was brilliant in its simplicity. I sank to my knees and gently took Zeybeck’s cock in my hand. Looking up into his eyes I smiled luridly, then opened my mouth and took him in.
He quickly became erect and I kept at it for a while until I heard him moan softly. When I felt Zeybeck was on the verge, I pulled my mouth off and took him in my hand, pumping furiously. When he erupted, I made sure it made a big mess in his ample pubic hair, then finally removed my hand and looked up with a big smile.
My plan worked perfectly, as Zeybeck promptly excused himself to the bathroom to clean up. As soon as the door shut I wiped my hand on his bedspread, grabbed the cloner and turned off his computer, sticking it back in the bag. Dropping the cloner in my purse, I quickly got dressed.
I was putting my shoes on when Zeybeck returned from the bathroom. “I really should get going,” I said, putting my arms around his neck and pressing my body against his nakedness. “Olin, I’ve had a wonderful time with you.” He was surprised, but the man had already had two orgasms and was probably happy I had no plans to stick around. He slipped on his pants and walked me to the door.
“I hope I will see you again, Sophie,” he said. “I will look for your book.” Neither sentiment sounded sincere, though I had no doubt he’d be thanking his buddy Turgut for hooking him up with a Western slut.
“Maybe fate will bring us back together one day,” I said wistfully. Yeah, the day he figured out who had stolen all the secrets from his computer. Zeybeck opened the door for me and I was soon walking through the quiet Turkish night toward my hotel. I dialed a number on my cell phone and Musgrave pulled up in a rented car two blocks later.
Thirteen
“They’re looking over the data now. It’s still early and there’s a lot to pour over, but suffice to say we were absolutely right about Zeybeck’s involvement in Iranian nuclear weaponry design.” Sills was sitting on the corner of his desk and I was comfortably nestled into a chair, no longer as nervous when meeting with him as I’d been early on. “The lab says you removed the cloner with roughly fifteen percent of the data still uncopied. The good news is that the eighty-five percent you got will hopefully tell us everything we need to know.”
I smiled at my boss, thankful for the pat on the head. After returning to the hotel in Izmir, I’d once again been so amped up I was unable to sleep. Musgrave and I were on an early flight out the next morning and I got some sleep on the plane, and here I sat in Sills’s office less than thirty hours after my mission had concluded.
“So all in all, you did very well for your first real job, Agent Mercer.” Sills took on a more somber tone. “I need to ask if you felt you were in any danger.”
“No, sir,” I said. “Zeybeck completely bought the cover story, especially with Turgut making the introduction.”
“And you had no difficulties?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. “I initially had a little trouble getting the target to cooperate. And then I had some p
roblems finding sufficient time with his computer when he wasn’t around.”
“But you never felt endangered in any way?” he asked again.
“No, sir,” I said proudly.
“Then why did you leave before your mission goal had been completed?”
I was stunned. “Excuse me?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”
“The data, Anna,” Sills explained. “Your job was to acquire one hundred percent of the data on that computer. You left without accomplishing that, even though you say you never felt threatened.”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought I’d just completed a perfectly executed operation, and now my boss was telling me otherwise. “Sir, I did feel pressure keeping the target occupied long enough to complete the mission. I thought it would be difficult to continue distracting him.”
“You needed only another ten or fifteen minutes,” Sills replied. “It’s your job to do whatever it takes in those situations to make that happen. Unless, of course, you feel you’re putting yourself in danger by doing so.”
I had no response. Sills was right, obviously. I was concerned about keeping Zeybeck occupied and had bailed out before the cloner had finished its job — before I had finished my job. Even though I never felt as if I were in any real trouble.
“I understand, sir,” I said contritely. “And yes, I’m sure I could have kept the target busy a while longer. I was nervous, I guess. It won’t happen again.”
“We may never know whether anything critical wasn’t copied,” Sills said, “because we can’t see what we don’t have.”
“You can trust me to remain more clear-headed on future missions, I assure you,” I told him.
Sills eased up a bit. “You did a decent job for your first true operation, Anna, and the potential damage caused by your error isn’t major. We obviously wouldn’t have given you a critical task your first time out of the gate. I understand this type of mission is not easy and comes with a unique set of possible complications. The Agency has full faith in you going forward. Just try to keep your mission goal in mind at all times.”
Sleeping With the Enemy Page 9