The locals call it “The Hill”, a dry dusty piece of God’s country that was never meant to sustain human life. The map calls it Los Alamos and the government calls it Project Y, one of three parts of the Manhattan project. I just call it hell. The secret military compound was a virtual prison camp. Barbed wire topped the fences, guard dogs patrolled the perimeter and you couldn’t take a crap without some pistol jockey checking the colour of your badge.
We all had to wear them, small round badges with a number instead of a name. Numbers were anonymous but it was the colours that kept us in our place. I was given a white badge the day I arrived. White was top of the line, an all access pass, the chosen colour of the eggheads. But women don’t talk to whites, not the women I was interested in anyway. Soon as I figured out that fact I traded my white button in for a yellow; tech access but not top of the line.
Oksana didn’t notice me when I was a white. Her husband was a white. A physicist from Poland, Bronislawa had a good fifteen years on his charming wife and he wore her like a brand new watch. She was a pretty girl, not beautiful and Los Alamos was ageing her. Rumour had it that her father was Russian royalty and was ousted by the current regime. Oksana was used to the good life. This wasn’t it.
It was easy to catch her. I told her she looked like Jean Harlow and that I would know because I lived next door to Harlow back in Hollywood. Like most of the foreign women, she was entranced by the glamour of movie stars and that made her keen to talk to me. It was just talk at the beginning. That’s the only way to start. You have to take it slow or you scare them away. It’s like breaking a horse, only a lot more fun. After a few short conversations I graduated to a hand on her arm, always an innocent gesture. Let me help you step over that puddle. Oh, wait, I think it’s over this way. From there it was a hand on her back, then a whisper in her ear and finally she was mine for the taking.
We agreed to meet in town at the La Fonda hotel. It was a regular watering hole for residents of the hill so no one would pay attention to her or me, not that anyone ever paid attention to me, I was invisible.
Oksana was shaking like a wet poodle when she slipped into the room. “We shouldn’t — ” I didn’t let her finish. I grabbed her then and kissed her, hard. She stiffened in my arms and I worried that she might nix the whole thing. “So beautiful,” I said, with the cream in my voice. “So elegant.” I ran my hand through her pin-curled hair, then drew my fingers along the side of her face. “Now that I really see you, I know I was wrong. It’s not Harlow, it’s Lombard.”
“Carole Lombard?” Oksana sighed. “No, you lie.” She ducked her chin and blushed a pleasant shade of red.
“If Clark Gable were here he’d slug me for making time with his girl.” I slipped my finger under her chin and lifted, raising her eyes to mine. There were tears there and for a second I felt like a first-class heel. She was just a child.
“I’ve never been with a man.” Then she corrected herself. “Another man. Not Danez. I’ve never been unfaithful.”
She was thinking again. That wasn’t good. I crushed her mouth like a ripe tomato as I cupped my hand around her breast. She gasped at that and I knew I had her back. That was the trick. Pleasure. No time to think. I slipped my arm beneath her thin legs and scooped her off the floor. “You deserve the best,” I said, planting the seed. “You deserve to have all you desire.” I laid her on the bed then knelt beside her. She was panting with a mixture of excitement and fear. “Take your blouse off.”
“I can’t. My hands.” She held them up and I could see that they were shaking.
“Allow me.” I stretched out beside her then began to free her one button at a time. She tried to contain herself but four buttons down her hips began to grind against the bed. Two more buttons and I could see bare skin peeking out around a sturdy and serviceable undergarment. “You deserve better,” I said as I undid the fasteners. “You deserve silk and satin, nothing else against your tender skin.” Two white mounds of flesh presented themselves for the taking. I took. My mouth latched on to the nearest breast while my thumb and forefinger twisted the nipple of the other. The combination of pleasure and pain soon had her mooing like a happy cow. I blew a warm breath on the hardened nub forcing it to stand at attention. Then I worked the other, fingers first, blow – pop. So sweet.
Her skirt was the next thing to go, then her panties. I left her stockings in place. There’s nothing like the sight of a woman naked except for stockings and a garter belt. My dick agreed with my mind but I wasn’t ready to let him out to play just yet. I took off my shirt and tossed it to the floor to mingle with her clothes. Then, crawling on my knees, I settled myself between Oksana’s legs. I kneaded her thighs with my strong fingers, relishing the way she twitched and moaned beneath my touch.
“You deserve to be pampered,” I said, reinforcing the thought. “Like a princess.” I slipped my hands under her knees and lifted, forcing her legs open and back. She lifted her head, her eyes wide with wonder. I still had my pants on and that confused her.
“First you, then me,” I said. She had no idea what she was in for until she felt the warmth of my breath on her pussy.
“No!” Her small body jerked, her hands reaching out as if to stop me. “Please. I can’t.”
“Can’t? There is nothing for you to do but enjoy.” I covered her soft folds with my mouth. She moaned louder and longer. There were words in there but they were too garbled to understand. I sent my tongue searching for the jewel in the crown and I knew I had found it when she screamed. I sucked and teased, biting tender flesh, then soothing it with my tongue, over and over rocking her body with wave after wave of ecstasy. My dick was not amused. It banged against my zipper demanding to be let out. Frustrated by my own lack of control, I sat back on my heels and worked loose my belt.
“No one,” Oksana said between breaths. “Has ever done that to me.”
“Poor thing, what you’ve been missing.” I unzipped my pants then shoved the material down around my thighs. My cock unfurled like a flag on the Fourth of July. “Look at what you’ve done to me.”
Instead of looking, she closed her eyes tight. I grabbed her hand and placed it on my hardened dick. She resisted at first but slowly she encircled the flesh with her long thin fingers. “That’s a girl. Squeeze.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“And I’ll love it.” She made a noise deep in her throat and the lava began its rise.
“Squeeze. Work it with your hand.” To help her along I slid two fingers into her pussy. She was the earth on the day Noah sailed the ark – flooded. Oksana pulled at my dick, an amateurish attempt but I had to give her points for trying. The last one wouldn’t even try. She had lain there like a dead fish, waiting for me to fuck her. But not this one. Oksana was adventurous, perfect for what I had in mind. Damn it. “Stop. Let go.” I pulled my fingers out of her wet cunt and replaced them with my dick. I slipped it into her like I slipped my gun into the holster. She was tighter than I expected or maybe I was just bigger. She gasped when I entered her and I saw her bite her lip from the pain. At least she wasn’t a virgin. That was the good thing about the married ones, they arrived already broken in.
I lifted her legs higher and felt myself slide deeper into her channel. Then I settled myself into position to begin the retreat. Out. In. Out. In. I picked up speed, a jack-hammer with miles of road to dig up. She was crying, moaning, screaming. It was all mixed together and I knew she was going to hate me in the morning. Her husband never made her feel like this. Her husband never fucked her until she was too weak to move. Her husband never treated her to a finger in the ass just as she was about to come, but I did. I knew how to make a woman beg for more and that was what it was all about. Getting my rocks off was just a bonus. Perk of the job. The job. Damn it.
There was a low, wet sucking sound as I pulled my wasted dick out of her aching pussy. Her hands grabbed for me as if wanting to shove me back in but I was done. I climbed over her legs and dropped down beside her on the bed. Now was the perfect time. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She was high on sex.
“If only,” I said.
“If only what?” She took the bait.
“If only I could stay.”
Despite her exhaustion she popped up to one elbow. “Stay? In town?”
“On the hill. I have to leave next week. I failed.”
“I don’t understand.” She draped her arms over my chest and clung to me.
“I shouldn’t tell you this but I’m not who I appear to be.” Just like the sex, take it slow, lead up then wham. “This bomb they’re building, it’s wrong. People are going to die, innocent people.”
“Our enemies. The Germans deserve what they get.”
“All the Germans? What about the children and the mothers and the Jews? The bomb can’t tell the difference. They’ll all die when it’s dropped.”
She shivered and latched on a little tighter. “I don’t wish to talk about it. There is nothing to be done.”
“But there is.” I set a reassuring kiss on her forehead. It was damp and tasted of salty sweat. “If the Krauts had a bomb we wouldn’t risk dropping ours. It would be a stand-off.”
Oksana shook her head. “No. It would be worse. Hitler with a bomb.”
“Ten thousand dollars would make life very sweet.”
“Ten thousand dollars? That’s quite a lot of money. For what?”
I stroked her face with my free hand. “Documents. Plans. I can’t get to the kinds of drawings and reports that they need.”
“My husband,” she said softly.
“His reports would do the trick. They don’t need much. Drawings maybe, of the bomb.”
“Ten thousand dollars?”
“If I had a pipeline, if I had access to documents then I could stay.” I tipped my head downwards and licked her softened nipple. “We could make love every day.”
“No. Yes.” She closed her eyes as her nipple shaped itself into a tight square. “I have to think. I can’t think”
I rolled over on her so my mouth was near her ear. “Did you like it when I sucked you down there?” The quick rise and fall of her chest was the only answer. “You came so hard I thought you might break”
“Yes,” she said. “I never.”
“But now you have. And you can have it again and again. Would you like that?”
“Yes.” Another breathy reply.
“Then help me, baby. Bring me what I need and I’ll take you back to paradise.”
We met again a little more than a week later. I don’t know how she managed to get a pass so soon after her last “shopping trip”, but she did and she left me a message saying I should meet her. I, of course, had no trouble getting off the hill. Getting off was easy. Staying off was the tough part.
Oksana arrived at the hotel red-faced and breathless with anticipation. I could see that she had been thinking about our last encounter. She was shaking when she entered the room and it wasn’t from nerves. She wanted it bad and that’s why her face fell so quickly when she saw Calvin and Hume.
“He’s the man with the money,” I explained but she still remained disappointed. Their presence meant it would be that much longer before she’d have me between her legs.
“I understand you have something for me,” said Calvin.
Without speaking, Oksana reached into her purse and pulled out a thick fold of paper. She handed it to him and we all waited in silence as he perused the pile.
“These documents are quite revealing,” Calvin said as he flipped through the pages. “Won’t they be missed?”
“No, Danez, my . . .” she had trouble saying the word, “husband is always scribbling on bits of paper, it is the way he thinks things through. I throw most of them away and he never asks for them again. I took what I could find. Some are written in Polish. I don’t read Polish very well, not the science words, so I do not know if they are helpful or not.”
“From what I can see, they’ll be very helpful.” Calvin gave me a look but I turned away. I hated this part. He dropped the papers into his open briefcase then took out a black leather badge case. “Oksana Bronislawa, you’re under arrest for treason.”
“Treason? But I don’t understand!” She tried to look at me too but I kept my eyes on the floor.
“Selling secrets to an enemy, Mrs Bronislawa. You’ll have to come with us. Hughes, take her downstairs. I’ll be there in a minute.” Calvin’s man took her by the arm and then led her to the door. She called out my name but nothing more. No begging or pleading from this one. No anger, no tears, those would come later.
“So how many does that make?” Calvin asked when she was gone.
“Three out of six. The next one will be the tie-breaker.”
Calvin shook his head. “What’s your secret?”
“That’s easy. Always let her come first, literally.”
“Shit, if that’s what it takes, I’ll stick to arresting them.”
Mrs Abigail Covington was the wife of a British explosives expert. She was an older woman with a classic style and expensive tastes. I told her she reminded me of Garbo and I oughta know, see I used to live right next door to Garbo in Hollywood . . .