Paradise (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant)

by O. L. Casper

  When I got back to the room I took a pocketknife, popped the Phillips head screwdriver out and took apart my phone. I noticed nothing different about it so I put it back together. Evidently the bugging had only required a software change and not a change of the hardware.

  From the MacBook I constantly checked Carter’s computer but there were no updates to his diary. At one point while I was checking his computer my mobile phone buzzed. It was Carter. A flash of adrenaline shot through my body as I answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Sophia. It’s me, Glenn.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better. How are you?”

  “I’ve been better too.”

  I kept waiting for him to say, “I’d like you to come down to the embassy,” but he didn’t say it.

  “I just wanted to let you know to keep what I returned to you this afternoon out in the open for the best results. Can you do that?”

  “Without appearing too conspicuous, I’ll try.”

  “Thank you. And relax. With any luck this will all be over tonight and we’ll all be safe and sound before we know it.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Yes. Let’s.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, somewhat anxiously, “I hear someone coming.”

  “Understood. Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  I cut off the call and pocketed the phone.

  There was a knock at the door.

  My heart beat faster.

  The door opened and a silhouetted figure entered the room and turned on the light.

  “It’s dark in here,” Stafford said as he set what appeared to be a bag of groceries down on the bed.

  “I was just watching the fireworks. Sorry.”

  “Are you ready to go?”

  “To the club?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. I’m feeling kind of tired. Jetlag, I guess.”

  “Understandable. Have an espresso and you’ll feel better.”

  I nodded.

  He looked at me for a bit longer than he usually did.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “You seem tense, that’s all. A little on edge, maybe.”

  “Hopefully the club will relax me.”

  “Is something on your mind, my love?”

  “That’s just it. There’s absolutely nothing at all on my mind. Completely blank. I’m beginning to worry.”

  I smiled at him. He looked confused.

  “I’m sure it’s just the jetlag,” he said. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “Yes. Is it alright?”

  “It’s fine. Great, actually. You look stunning.”

  “Thanks. And you.”

  He smiled.

  “You seem a bit high-strung yourself.”

  “Jetlag, I guess. And the deal. I’ve got to get the deal right tonight.”

  “A lot hinging on it?” I asked, trying in vain to sound nonchalant.

  “Just our future freedom from the empire,” he joked. “Isn’t the line in Star Wars something like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  The 526 Club had a very Mediterranean feel to it. After passing through security we entered a lounge that looked out on the Caspian. The first thing that hit you was the house music. The 526 Club’s sound system produced a throbbing bass that thumped like a rapid series of hypersonic booms. The deejay alternated skillfully through a series of house, drum and bass, and trip hop tracks. I felt like a teenager in the late nineties at a rave. I followed Stafford through rapidly flashing strobe lights to a low-lying table in the shape of a figure eight that was surrounded by two curved love seats. Stafford ordered a bottle of champagne. He looked at me smiling and then out to the sea.

  “You approve?” he said, eyes aglow in the artificial light.

  “Of what?”

  “The venue.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  As I said it, I saw Carter, Haverstock, and several other similarly dressed men sit down at the other end of the room. They didn’t look at us. Instinctively I scratched my wrists. Thinking things over, I realized it’d be very lucky if Stafford or myself or both of us didn’t go away in handcuffs with those men before the end of the night. The champagne came. It was a welcome diversion. Stafford looked at Carter and the group more than a few times.

  “You see those men over there.”

  I nodded.

  “They’re all FBI.”

  I yawned. But it was a forced yawn. Not natural at all.

  “But of course you already knew that.” He smiled deviously. “They think they’re going to make a move tonight. Make an arrest. Bring down a big bad guy. Who knows what they really think of it all? Do they think? They think something’s going to happen. They’ll try to act like the cops in the movies. But what they don’t realize is I’m ten steps ahead of the game.”

  He smiled confidently. There was a defiant glow about him that I’d never seen before. I hoped he was right, but I doubted it. I didn’t think he knew what he was up against. I didn’t think either of us realized how far up this went within the gilded corridors of the Unites States government. I had lied in my diary to try to save him. Wrong dates, wrong times. But now I thought it was a clear case of too little, too late. I’d watch him get arrested tonight, and be lucky if I wasn’t arrested myself. Or worse, he’d resist and go down in a hail of bullets. No, I didn’t want to think about that.

  Two men sat at the table with us so rapidly I gave a start in my seat. They were both Americans, tall and with a grace of manner uncommon to the nationality. They reminded me of Stafford in a way, they went to Harvard or Yale and subscribed to the tacit code of an old boy’s club. They set some file folders down on the table before us, thick with documents. They refused champagne and ordered sparkling water instead.

  Stafford introduced Taylor and Mason in an affable manner. I didn’t know whether those were first or last names. By their manner, they seemed to already know who I was.

  “What have you boys got for me?”

  “Why don’t you take a look for yourself?”

  They slid Stafford the files.

  He opened the first one. There were large glossy black and white photographs, high contrast, of various men in crowded market places. The market places were blurry, but, from what I could make out, were bazaars in the Middle East.

  “You recognize any of these men?” Mason asked.

  “Is that a trick question?”

  Taylor looked at Mason.

  “I’ve done deals with two of them. I recognize the rest of them.”

  “You on good terms with them? Think you could pull off another deal?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Certainly?”

  “Well, with the right equipment and the right amount of money…”

  I realized I’d forgotten to take my phone out. I wasn’t about to take it out now.

  I glanced in Carter’s direction. He took his phone out and looked at it. Apparently he’d received a message.

  The group appeared not to be paying any attention to us.

  The phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked at it under the table. It was a notification from Minerva. I’d put the spy app back on the phone after I received it back from the FBI—I’d deleted it before the lunch meeting with Carter. Minerva showed me a text Carter had just received from Quantico. It read: “Sophia Durant’s Diary was somehow embedded with a powerful virus. It’s targeted our case files about her and Stafford and has effectively deleted most of it. We’re not quite sure how. Make arrests tonight. Arrest them both. That’s an order.”

  I looked up and saw Carter pocket his phone. He looked at me. I noticed, overwhelmed by fear, I had stopped breathing. I made a conscious effort to resume.

  “Are we talking Zippos, or are we talking red hornets and frogs here?” Mason asked.

  Stafford sniffed.

  “We’re talking Zi
ppos. We’re talking bubblegum sticks. We’re talking tennis rackets. Borises. Red hornets. Frogs. King cobras. The whole nine yards. Any and everything.”

  “That’s what we thought,” Mason said and looked at Taylor.

  “Now we don’t care if they dump this shit in Senegal or Liberia. But we have intelligence that some of it’s about to make its way north. First Eastern Europe. Then west from there.”

  “That’s not good,” Stafford said with a worried look on his face. I honestly couldn’t tell whether it was genuine or not.

  “Not good at all. That’s why we came to you,” Taylor said.

  Mason picked up where Taylor left off, “We’ve provided you a free pass on this stuff in the past because…well you know why.”

  “You’ve done us favors. We’ve done you favors. That’s all that needs to be said.”

  Taylor and Mason looked at me.

  “She’s my cyber warrior. She’s privy to all my secrets,” Stafford said.

  I tried to conceal a smirk.

  “She’s your wife,” Taylor said.

  “She’s that too.” Stafford smiled.

  “Privy to your secrets or not, she hasn’t been vetted,” Mason interjected.

  “Look. We’re all in this together. She’s with me.”

  Mason started to speak, but Taylor cut him off.

  “Back off, Mason. If he wants her in, she’s in. If he says she’s good for it, she is.”

  Mason addressed me: “You understand the importance of the utmost secrecy regarding these matters?”

  “Sure. I won’t speak of it.”

  “Not even to those men sitting over there? Your FBI buddies?”

  “Who are you?” I asked, genuinely surprised at their situational awareness.

  “We work for another part of the Uncle Sam franchise.”

  CIA, I thought.

  “We’re Wall Street lawyers,” Taylor cut in.

  Mason seemed irritated with Taylor’s interjection. I couldn’t get a reading on Taylor.

  “You work for the company,” I said after a moment. The company is how CIA agents to refer to the agency.

  They looked at one another, irritated that I had figured out who they were.

  “I see what’s going on here,” I began. “Do you know how close we all are to them fucking up this whole operation?”

  “What did they tell you?”

  I leaned in. I took my phone out of my pocket and sat on it.

  “They’re convinced he’s a murderer.”

  Taylor and Mason both cracked half-smiles and exchanged glances.

  Stafford smiled.

  “I don’t see what the fuck is so funny. They’re convinced he’s a murderer. They’re going to make an arrests tonight.”

  Stafford looked at me, surprised.

  “How do you know this?” inquired Mason.

  “How indeed?” chimed in Taylor.

  “One of the special agents tells me more than he should.”

  “You’ve managed to seduce one of them?”

  “In a way.”

  Stafford looked at me.

  Taylor took out his phone. A new message glowed on the screen. He unlocked it and tapped something into the text box.

  Taylor looked at Stafford and said, “Your girl’s pretty sharp.”

  “What about them?” Stafford motioned toward the FBI party.

  “They been spying a lot lately?” Mason asked.

  “Like flies on shit.” Stafford didn’t smile.

  “That’s all taken care of. Look over there right about…now.”

  I watched as a party of five men in suits approached the agents.

  There was a brief exchange of words followed by the FBI men taking out their ID cards. The suits collected the cards and put them into a briefcase. One of them instructed the FBI men to stand up and they did. The suits ushered the FBI out of the club.

  Carter looked perplexed and angry as he left.

  He glanced at me. I wanted to wink as he did in Otel Egoist earlier, but I didn’t want to tempt the fates. Honestly I was as perplexed as he was. I watched him with a neutral expression as I was strangely overcome in sudden smooth waves of elation. Maybe it was a release after the last several months of obsessing over my own shadow. Maybe it was the sense of power brought on by the situation. Whatever it was didn’t matter. I basked in it.

  Mason smiled and said, “That’s the last you’ll be seeing of them.”

  “Just like that?” Stafford asked.

  “Just like that,” Mason replied.

  How is this possible? I thought. Thoroughly bewildered, I looked at the table around which the FBI agents had sat just moments before.

  Taylor addressed me, “You can stop sitting on your phone now. In fact, if you let me see it, I’ll wipe the spyware they put in it.”

  I handed him the phone.

  “Useful friends,” I said to Stafford.

  “You have no idea.”

  A cool wave of exhilaration, greater than any previous, came over me as I realized what was going on.

  “Out of curiosity, how can you just get rid of them like that?” I asked, thinking I already knew the answer but still astonished at the fact. I had to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

  “Why, ma’am, it’s a matter of national security, of course.”

  He smiled.

  I slid the open file over and thumbed through the black and white photos.

  Then I looked at Stafford with some amazement.

  The three of them were looking at me with curiosity.

  “You work for the government,” I said in astonishment to Stafford.

  “I work with them. Sometimes.”

  He said it as though he were revealing nothing of any interest at all.

  Tears came to my eyes.

  “What’s the matter, sweet heart?”

  “I’ve let you down.”

  I put my head in my hands and sobbed. I was overcome by spontaneous emotion.

  “I thought terrible things about you. I was wrong. This whole time—I was wrong.”

  Stafford put his arm around me.

  “It’s okay. No harm, no foul.”

  “But the things that they think.”

  I nodded to where Carter and his men had sat.

  “What they think doesn’t matter in the slightest,” Taylor said. “They’re off the case. They’ll be debriefed, and put on to something else. Everything they learned about Stafford and you will be classified Top Secret on the grounds of national security. They won’t be told anything further. Case closed. All is said and done.”

  “The people who died…the disappearances.”

  Stafford eyed me carefully as I said this.

  “It doesn’t matter. All those cases, anything tied to this, will be shut down hence forth.”

  I was so relieved I just coasted on feelings of pure euphoria, waiting patiently for the meeting to end. Part of me doubted what they said, but all evidence, all reason pointed to the truth of it. I thought about Carter and Haverstock and the pressure they had exerted on me over the past several months. I thought about how my life had become a nightmare because of their incessant hounding. And I thought about what they might think of me now. How Stafford and I had overcome their efforts completely. How we were just sitting back laughing at them now. I was amazed, and felt indomitable like a gangster in 1940s cinema.

  Special Agent Glenn Carter’s Notes

  January 6, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas

  I cleaned out my makeshift office at the hotel on Eleuthera in the blackest of moods. I had worked harder on the Stafford case than any other in my history at the Bureau. I was sure I had discovered the truth. And this was the thanks I got. I’m not even allowed to write down in my personal notes any of the details of the case. It’s all classified at the highest level. A clearance level I don’t have. Stafford should be shot. Men like him who can just walk between the raindrops. Men for whom the ordinary laws governing mere mortals don’
t apply. I never got to figure out his involvement in the multiple murders and disappearances. Though I’m sure he’s the arch villain in these dark affairs. Ms. Durant had almost nothing to do with it. True, she may have had inside information regarding the dead and disappeared, but now we’ll never know what really happened.

  I’m also sad I’ll never see Sophia Durant again. Admittedly I got attached and I shouldn’t have. But she’s an extraordinary woman. It would have been interesting to read more of her diary and to discuss it with her, but that’s all been given the highest classification and locked away.

  Let me sign off by saying, Sophia—I saw that you had access to my notes in your diary, so if you’re reading this, I want you to know you changed my life and the way I view the world in ways I never could have imagined. You are extraordinary, one in ten million. Whatever your involvement in events in the last six months, I hope you come through it all okay. Actually, from what I did get to know of you, I’ll venture to say that I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’ll cope better than anyone else. I wish you the best. And good luck. Over and out.

  Sophia Durant’s Diary

  January 17, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas

  I did read Glenn Carter’s entry from January 6 albeit much later. Needless to say, it was a very satisfying read. The most satisfying read I’ve had from his notes. Upon reading it I extracted Minerva from his computer. I’d never read any of his notes again. For all the suspense and tension that had built up over the past months I felt this ending had been rather anticlimactic. Almost like there was some trick to it. So I became wary. There was a vague feeling that not all the loose threads had been tied up. I enjoyed being back at Eleuthera. Finally I felt I could relax and live a life of ease and peace within my surroundings. Stafford was very involved in his business of international affairs at the time so I spent a lot of time on my own on the beaches or with Anna smoking reefers. And I meditated a great deal on coming to terms with all that had gone on in my life over the last six months. I had found the experience alienating, and it put me outside of myself, creating a feeling of internal disconnect. Not to mention, deep regret and sorrow.