Which brought me back to the puzzle of Luis Antunes. Hodd said that Antunes’s operation in the UK was legit, and so far, I confirmed that this seemed to be true. You could walk into Blockbuster and find his movies. Past the whole shelves given over to Spider-Man 3 and the latest Harry Potter, down on a lower rack almost hidden away, would be two rental copies of an “erotica’ feature by his company, Silky Pictures. Hodd had summed it up well: “pretensions to plot.’ But Antunes scored high marks for at least trying to make the sex interesting, not quite Zalman King of Red Shoe Diaries fame but in his league.
I rented Detective Desire, an older Silky Pictures release and one that had actually been directed by Antunes himself. I thought I might gain insight into the man. And because it struck me as depressing to watch porn alone, I called up my friend Fitz, and we screened it at his place near Finsbury Park. The bonus was I got to watch the film horizontally.
Fitz was a gifted massage therapist, and now that he’d just opened his new center offering Swedish, shiatsu, and aromatherapy, he spent less time as one of Helena Willoughby’s most sought-after escorts. His bookings for her are few and far between these days, and his price has shot way up. Lucky me, I’m a friend. I not only got to lie nude on his table with his magic fingers turning my muscles into mousse, I had this gorgeous man of nut-brown complexion with funky dreads naked and working his biceps as he worked me. Facing my head, he put his palm heels into the small of my back as I inspected his abs. My, that’s a nice body, I thought. It had been a while. For years, Fitz and I had carried on this special relationship, drifting back to each other briefly when we were both single and needing attention, friends but something else, something more.
I raised myself on one elbow and took the crimson head of his long dick into my mouth. He was thick and firm and warm, like a chocolate about to melt in my mouth, only I certainly hoped he wouldn’t. Mmmm…Firming up. Good. Then I felt a playful slap on my ass.
“Hey, I’m not done here!’
I let him go and said in my defense, “It’s the movie. Making me horny.’
“No, it’s not. You’re barely paying attention.’
“Sure, I am. The famous international detective thinks he’ll find clues in that girl’s bra.’
“Is that how they solve cases?’ laughed Fitz. “Why are you watching this drivel? What can you learn?’
“I don’t know. See how this guy thinks.’
I rolled onto my side, and Fitz perched himself close to me on the massage table. We watched for a bit, idly petting each other. The silliness of the plot didn’t matter anymore. We watched these ambitious shots of Lisbon or … somewhere, I forgot, didn’t matter. Down a stone stairwell and through the bars of an iron gate, the clever detective lay back, his hands reaching up to feel the girl’s breasts as she rode him, her hands in lacy gloves. In the movie, it started to rain, droplets running down her cheeks and torso, the girl licking her lips. Okay, this looks pretty hot. My fingers slid down to cup Fitz’s balls, circling to grip his cock. He started to get hard.
In the movie, the couple changed positions, the girl gripping the iron bars as the guy took her from behind. They got soaked by the movie rain, which, of course, made them more beautiful, and two gentle fingers slid along the glaze of massage oil on my back. Fitz leaned in to kiss me. Light from the TV screen flashed in the darkened room as our tongues coiled, played, danced. His strong left hand slid down my slippery polished belly, rounding my thigh to grip a cheek of my ass, his thumb pressing in as his right hand covered my mound, fingers finding my clit. He did … something … to a muscle…when he was… strumming my clitoris and oh oh oh. Long minutes of gasping, my hands gripping the sides of the table, movie for gotten, as I suddenly, explosively came. Come here. Barely spoken but my mouth forming the words.
Feeling like we were suspended in space on the narrow massage table I slid off, leaving him there, making him lift one of his strong, beautifully shaped legs up. Then I was flicking my tongue underneath his balls, his musk thick in my nostrils as I lapped the delicate skin of his perineum. His cock was a steel bar, and his glazed fingers started to jerk himself. He had to. Had to touch himself. A tortured moan as he stopped, didn’t want to come yet.
I got back on the table and pulled him on top of me, lifting my knees, and then the head of his cock teased the gates of my pussy, pushing gently, slipping in. Then all of him in one confident surge, his taut stomach against mine, my palms gripping his ass. A delicious oozing of the leftover massage oil, a silky feel. Silky Pictures. Mind wandering for just a second, and then we were kissing each other hard, nine steel-girder inches of him filling me, and he pumped only a little, a sweet and subtle momentum to keep me wet, keep himself hard, to build things. But we reveled more in the embrace, tightly holding each other, in a cocoon of oil and heat. I knew tonight I wanted it dirty, really dirty, wanted to let myself go and unravel him as well.
There was no more movie—we were the movie. Fitz braced himself on his straight arms, and my fingers slid down his chest, enjoying the view. He came out of me and climbed down, knowing I’d bleat a complaint but urging me to change positions, to slide down the table so that I was poised at its end, my legs open, knees up, and he stood and pushed into me, so deep I let out a grateful whimper. His palms on my kneecaps, he started ramming hard, my pussy making a rude slurp with the sudden intrusion of that long dark cock, and I felt him boring into me, until the sensation made my vaginal muscles contract and hold him fast, longing to keep him inside, a trip-hammer pulse. He shook violently, his dick impossibly lengthening as he shot and shot. Come here, an echo. Pulling me up so that I could clumsily wrap my arms around him, Fitz still in the shiver of orgasm. And then I felt my own sympathetic quakes. “Oh, fuck,’ I whispered. “Oh, fuck, that was good …’
He made this little-boy moan and looked into my eyes, apologizing for not taking his time. I wanted to ask: Are you kidding? That was amazing. He’d told me he’d been working like a dog, taking most of the bookings at his new center even though he had two other therapists. That meant he needed to be there for the City executives who wanted a treatment before the grind of the business day and the teachers desperate for relief after school was out. He had been there for me so many times, and I felt the stress in his body. “Burning both ends of the candle,’ he said wearily.
I kissed him and gently nibbled his bottom lip. “Hey, you want to see a real porn movie?’
Fitz laughed. “What are you talking about, babe?’
I reached for the massage oil on the little side table and gave myself a generous splash in both hands. Before he could say it wasn’t necessary, I had him on the massage table the way he’d had me, one hand cupping his balls, the other slick and sliding up his dick, making him hard again. “Want to…want to kiss you.’ And he sat up, our tongues coming together even as my middle finger strayed under his balls exploring. His cock grew in my small fist, and if I do this right…
I was inside him.
Massaging his prostate, I never saw a cock snap to attention so fast, fill with blood and engorge, enormous. My fingers jerked his shaft, and I thought he’d come instantly, but no, his focus divided, and it was all the sweeter with the suspense, building, building as he gripped the sides of the table. His hand was suddenly on my ass, pulling me a little off balance as he cried out in pleasure and shock, ribbons of white cum slapping my breast and belly. But I wasn’t done.
Just a little pressure, the slightest caress, and there was another twitch of his cock, another stream flying onto my tits. He kissed me hungrily and half-embraced me in this obscene clinch, the thick smell of oil and spunk and musk in the room, my fingers still inside him. His eyes went wide as he experienced another orgasm, a dribble of semen down the red cherry dome. I felt drunk on my sensual power, like Kim the last time we made love, relentlessly making him come. He did one last time, a very weak stream but all the rush of pleasure.
“Oh, shit, I think I needed that,’ said Fitz.
> “We both needed tonight.’
“Yeah … I wanted to say I’m sorry about Kim.’
I shrugged, giving him a couple of quick kisses on the mouth and cheek. “It’s all right. She wasn’t the one, that’s all.’
He shrugged back. “Well, we’re not the ones for each other. Think we’ll ever find these people?’
“I don’t know. But we have a blast together when we’re not looking, don’t we?’
A soft chuckle and a nod. By the time we thought to dive into the shower to clean up, the end credits rolled across the screen.
♦
So I can’t say that I got much insight from one of Luis Antunes’s movies. I was still trying to figure out his association with the hard-core stuff, the ones sold as pirate DVDs in the high street. No references to them on his Web site, no shared production company name. The hard-core ones had amateurish credit titles at the end: Ladrão Films; must be someone’s idea of an inside joke, since a few taps at Google told me ladrão means thief.
And how did Hodd know that Antunes was hooked up with the nastier porn merchants, wherever they were, whether in Lisbon or here?
I still had the rental car for a few days, so I took to parking outside the office/studio of Silky Pictures near Canary Wharf. I soon learned Luis Antunes was forty-two, but could pass for his mid-thirties. I expected a Hugh Hefner-Larry Flynt clone with gold chains and a Seventies open shirt, but he was nothing of the kind. He was gangly with spectacles and a halo of black curls, most days in casual dress, wearing an open-necked shirt and Marks & Spencer trousers to the studio. You’d think he was the tech support guy who got your Outlook Mail to work. I imagined his unassuming, gentle manner probably worked wonders with him playing surrogate “older brother’ to his porn stars—no creepy casting couch, no leering boss. Again, it made me wonder why Hodd wanted him investigated.
Helena would be amused to learn she was almost his neighbor. When the day ended and he pulled up in front of his mansion in nearby Twickenham, a lovely girl waited at the doorstep to throw her arms around him. She was mixed race, with light brown skin and big brown eyes, her dyed blond tresses in a Shakira style. She looked and sounded Portuguese from a distance. In his choice of partner, at least, Luis Antunes liked them young. The girl looked at best twenty-three years old.
On day three, I nearly jumped out of my skin with the knock on the passenger-side glass. “Shit!’
As I hit the button to slide down the window, I recognized one of the trench coat entourage from days earlier. Square face, small eyes, pasty white complexion. “Mr. Hodd is around the corner and would appreciate a word,’ he told me. “Let me get in so it looks like you’ve picked me up.’
I grumbled but hit the lock. Yeah, that was credible. Guy was dreaming if he thought I’d ever pick him up, but there was always the chance Antunes or his girlfriend might notice my car staying too long. I drove around the corner and started to chuckle. Again with the limousine. I hope this wasn’t their standard surveillance vehicle. The messenger boy opened the door for me, and I slid into the seat across from Hodd.
“So now, at your own expense and on your own time, you’re conducting the same investigation we were willing to pay you to do,’ he remarked. The same washed-out gray eyes staring out the window again, not looking at me. I don’t know why I found that so annoying but I did. “Well, Miss Knight, since you didn’t get in touch with us, we’ve come to you. And I’m here to renew my offer.’
“I’ve been watching Antunes three days now,’ I pointed out. “So you can either deduct them from the two months you need me for, or calculate back pay in addition to the two.’
“Agreed.’
“Oh, and you’ll add something special if you want my help.’
“The amount offered is generous,’ he said sourly. “And final.’
“No, the money’s fine, thank you. I’m asking for a guarantee. I want it signed by the appropriate bodies, and you’ll get one for me and a separate one for Helena Willoughby.’
“What kind of guarantees?’
“Neither of us ever pays income tax again,’ I said.
“That’s preposterous! We’re MI6, not Revenue!’
“You can get it. I know you can.’
Hodd muttered swearwords under his breath at my bloody gumption. Didn’t bother me in the least. If he was real, I knew he’d pay my price.
“And we still have issues to settle.’
At last, a direct glance. “I know. Give your car keys to James. He’ll follow us.’
“And where are we going?’
“Where you can verify that we are who we say we are,’ replied Hodd. “That is part of what’s bothering you, yes?’
♦
By now you might have guessed that Desmond Hodd is not the real name of the MI6 guy who contacted me. Just as I’m sure the types that keep an eye out for these things will scrub clean any other references that might contravene the Official Secrets Act (if this ever does get out at home or in America). So you just have to believe me when I tell you I can’t offer details, but Hodd’s way of serving up pudding for proof was a visit to Legoland, as they call it. The Legoland. Its address is 85 Albert Embankment, headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
Hey, everybody knows where it is. But you don’t just breeze in the way you do at the National Gallery, with a couple of bored security guards checking your bag.
So. I wasn’t looking at the ziggurat from Vauxhall Bridge —oh, no, Desmond Hodd’s limousine took us right past the security checks, and then I was ushered inside. The rest was anticlimax, really, since Hodd and his minions led me into a banal conference room with a view towards Millbank. When I got around to signing the contract he put in front of me, I might as well have been opening a new account at Abbey National. But that came later. First, I was determined to settle a score.
“Why ruin things with Kim?’
Hodd was irritable. “You’re back on that, are you? Look here. From what I understand, your relationship was not in the healthiest shape—’
“Still none of your business—’
“And I told you before that Miss Eden exercised poor personal judgment, for which—’
“Rubbish.’
“Let’s be candid, then,’ said Hodd. He made a steeple of his fingers, finding something fascinating in the pattern of the table’s oak finish. “Once we learned of her attempts to become involved with your lover, we saw no need to put a stop to it. I noted your penchant for getting into hypersexualized scenarios—and no, we are not specifically recruiting for that… talent. But should you find yourself in such a situation, or just coping with the undercover situation per se, you’d do well to keep your focus on the task at hand.’
“You prefer I have no personal distractions.’
“Yes.’
“You really are a bastard,’ I said gently.
Hodd was unruffled. “You are focusing your outrage on Miss Eden and myself, but I put it to you that it hardly matters who sent the girl or if the girl was even sent at all. Your lover still cheated on you.’
But Felicity Eden hadn’t fancied Kim out of the blue—he told her to do it. I was sure of it. Perhaps I’d never confirm it, but here he was with this convenient rationale to justify why it was a good thing in the end, all tied up with a bow ready for me when I challenged him. Bastard. It was on his orders.
Nothing I could do about that now.
“How did you link Luis Antunes to the prostitution and these alleged sex slaves in the DVDs?’
“That’s not important,’ Hodd replied briskly. “What matters is for you to prove he’s involved, that he’s their man in London.’
“Their man in London? Well, where’s the stuff coming from?’
“Again, not your problem.’ A rising note of impatience here. “Just find a provable link. Get us proof.’
I was still shaking my head, confused. “Proof…When have you guys ever cared about proof? You and your American friend
s told everyone there was proof of weapons of mass destruction, and we know how that turned out! Why don’t you go ahead and nab Antunes and do what you want? Why don’t you just—just turn him to catch the others you’re after?’
“We have our own plans for how this will proceed,’ said Hodd. He spoke slowly, as if I were six years old. “For what we will pay you, we are entitled to expect you will act in accordance with our plans.’
I played with the pen in my hand. The early deposit as per my requirement was spelled out, no loopholes. One of Hodd’s aides was, in fact, at a computer poised to transfer the funds as soon as ink hit paper. Two separate sheets waited, the legal immunities for Helena and myself from the clutches of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. So far, promises were kept.
I signed.
Hodd watched me finish writing my name and gave me an avuncular smile. Ah, there you are, that’s better. He said a car would pick me up from my flat on Monday at nine sharp (please be ready, sigh). I would be briefed on a few protocols for my own personal safety, be provided lunch, and then be taken to a facility in the afternoon where I’d start my lessons in digital editing. He understood there was a good chance I had already blabbed to Miss Willoughby about my previous encounter with him, nothing to be done, but from here on, the Act applied in terms of confidentiality. I was not to discuss my work or the case with her.
I could explain the new tax status I’d gained for her with any cover story I liked.
He gave me a business card with a special phone number on it, and at any time, day or night, I could ring the number if I learned something important I needed to pass on.
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