THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE (7 page)

'Red hair?'

'Sure a lot of redheads are reckless and have a short fuse. It's genetic. Irish genes, or something.'

'Ah, come on.' Artarmon stared at his wife and grinned, but was unable to mask his underlying tension.

'So what's the big deal with Scott Goldman?' She crunched down on a fresh pellet of chewing gum.

'Nothing really,' Artarmon said, before voicing the gnawing little doubt inside him.

'He and I just accessed some classified material at work. Nothing really important.'

She stopped chewing her gum. 'Are you sure?'

'Yeah, just some outdated drug formulas and research programs.'

'Has he got hard copies?'

Artarmon nodded reluctantly.

'Well, he won't go and show them to anyone, will he? After all, he was an accomplice to the act. I'm sure he'll be
discreet
.'

'He has got red hair, darling.'

'Okay, she said sharply, 'just don't show him anything else. Don't worry, you'll soon be leaving that creepy army place.' She chewed her gum and held her gleaming mauve nails to the light, a figure of confidence.

'Hmm, I guess you're right, I'm making too much of it.'

'As always,' she complained.

He rested his hand on her thigh. 'So what microwave delight awaits us tonight?'

'By the way, Spider's coming tomorrow to take my Jag to the workshop. And I have my doctor appointment at three-thirty. So why don't you leave work early and take me to Doctor Porter's?' She pushed her leg against his and toyed with the front of his hair in a way that usually brought him round to her way of thinking. 'Come on, darling, you know I hate taking cabs ...'

'Pilar, I can't – '

'Your boss won't be there tomorrow, and you said there's not that much to do. There can't be if you spend your time hacking with Scott Goldman. Come on, please.' She puckered her lips in a comical kiss, but her dark eyes spoke seriously of her want.

He analyzed her proposal then blew through his mouth. 'Okay, if you insist, my spoiled little viper.' He leaned across and kissed her porcelain-smooth cheek. 'So ...
what's
for dinner?'

'Patience, darling.' She tightened the lid on her nail polish. 'A large seafood pizza will be here any moment.'

SEVEN

Goldman lay on his queen-sized bed. Parts of him still ached from the no-restriction bouts at Billy Georgia's dojo. Thank God the gruelling bouts weren't weekly events. His upper-floor apartment was one of six in a brick complex in Towson, on Baltimore's north limit. Light rain fell from a woolly gray sky and the night's undying wind rustled the leaves of a large elm tree outside his bedroom window. A street lamp on the other side of the tree shone through the window's Venetian blinds, casting an eerie dance of shadow and light across the Guatemalan rug at the foot of his bed.

“
... it's nine-eighteen on College FM 96, and now a track from Dire Straits' new album
Making Movies ...”

Goldman turned down the bedside clock/radio and nestled against propped pillows. He shuffled together the twenty-odd pages he'd copied from the Silverwood computer. He took a deep breath and read the synopsis of a CIA project in the early fifties.

SUBJECT ONE: MK-ULTRA PROJECT

(INCORPORATING SUB-BRANCH CRYPTONYMS:

MK-DELTA, BLUEBIRD AND ARTICHOKE)

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTROL AND DIRECTION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR THROUGH BIOCHEMICAL PROCEDURES.

A PRELIMINARY SYNOPSIS BY J. A. HUGHES, PhD.

MARCH 21, 1962.

As acting Director of Central Intelligence, General Alexander Dulles approved the formation of Project MK-ULTRA on April 13, 1953.

Pan American Developments authorized $300,000 for initial project funding. MK-ULTRA was to fund and develop projects involving the use of biochemicals in classified military operations.

The principal reason behind the formation of the project and its sub-branches was the Soviet Union's purchase order for five kilograms (fifty-million human doses) of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland in November 1952.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commissioned Dr. Gottchalk's Washington think tank to deduce the motivation behind the Soviet purchase order, and to recommend an appropriate retaliatory response.

The Gottchalk Commission construed the Soviet order as a first step in stockpiling unconventional weaponry that could be used against the United States at an undisclosed juncture. The Gottchalk Commission recommended the following procedures as an appropriate retaliatory response:

a) The immediate issuance of a National Security D Notice upon Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, to effectively override and nullify the existing Soviet purchase order, in compliance with and utilization of Section 102 of the National Security Act of 1947.

b) The immediate issuance of a US purchase order upon Sandoz Pharmaceuticals for twice the amount of LSD as that ordered by the Soviet Union.

c) The immediate formation of a large umbrella project to fund the development of hallucinogens and neuroactive compounds, and to stockpile these chemical agents as a counter measure against Soviet application of similar substances ...

Goldman stopped reading and rubbed his eyes. Who could have imagined that shortly after World War Two his adoptive country had cornered the world supply of an unknown drug called LSD. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals? He stroked his chin and recalled a medical journal article he'd read at university. If he remembered rightly, Dr. Hoffman accidentally discovered LSD at the Sandoz laboratory in the early forties. As a fellow chemist Goldman empathized with Hoffman. He imagined how aggrieved the Swiss chemist must have been when the superpowers scrambled to use the hallucinogen for offensive cold war applications. Ah well, he thought, it wasn't the first time military agencies had railroaded an obscure discovery for questionable ends.

He glanced at his watch, picked up a remote, and turned on the portable TV resting on a small wheeled table at the foot of his bed. He turned up the volume as the nine-thirty finance report began. Four months earlier, Goldman had bought thirty gold coins: one-ounce Krugerrands. After the massive three hundred and thirty dollar drop in the gold price at the start of the year, his stockbroker had predicted the bullion price had nowhere to go but up. After hearing the day's quotation for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, he looked to the screen for the London and New York spot bullion prices.

Three hundred dollars profit, he roughly calculated. So much for my excursion into the world of high-finance. Hmm, least I'm ahead. He turned off the TV and grabbed his bedside phone. Humming to a Marvin Gaye song on the radio, he tapped the phone's buttons.

Belize Cheraz lit a stick of incense. She blew out the quivering yellow-green flame and pushed the perfumed stick into a blob of Plasticine on the shelf above her bathroom sink. The shapely Cuban-exile inhaled the stick's musky fragrance before turning on her tub's faucets. She glanced at the rusty watermark fanning down to the plughole, before inserting the metal plug. She flinched as gas-heated water swirled about her fingers.
Dios todopoderoso,
this sure beats that crappy burner in Havana, she mused, unleashing more cold water into the claw-footed tub.

She dried her hands, ground out a French cigarette, and pulled a phial of cocaine from her jeans. She poured the narcotic on to a front corner of the sink, then grabbed a razor blade from the medicine cabinet on the wall. She chopped and changed the powder into an even line. Using a tightly rolled dollar bill, she snorted the drug until not a crumb remained. The attractive young Latino groaned with pleasure and looked at a Jim Morrison poster (circa 1967) that she'd pinned to the peeling plaster above the toilet's cistern. Looking through the ghostly fingers of steam rising from the tub, she swore the dead musician winked at her, as if come to life, however lewdly, from his idolographic bondage on the wall.

But she was high, and getting more so. She hawked bits of powder down her throat and slid out of her jeans and panties. She squeezed an unstrapped breast through the tie-dyed cotton of her T-shirt, her other hand dropping to the dark triangle between her legs. She looked longingly at the Jim Morrison poster and threw back her head, savouring the ecstasy of her deft stroke. But with no peak in the offing, she wiped her finger across the powder-specked corner of the sink. She sucked on it and absorbed the rich taste. The familiar tang of the drug interspersed with the meaty salt of her arousal.

'God help me.' She groaned with throaty abandon. 'I'm so horny.'

'Hey,' her sister called from the other side of the bathroom door. 'Telephone.'

Belize wrapped a towel about her, turned off the taps, and opened the door.

'It's lover boy.' Her older sister tapped a dog-eared Spanish novel against her thigh, and looked put out.

'Now, now, don't be jealous,' snickered Belize, skipping past her to the hallway phone.

'Hello?'

'Hi babe, it's me.'

'Ah Scott,' she said in a husky tone that betrayed the pleasurable sensations of the narcotic she'd taken.

Goldman met Belize three months ago when she worked as a checkout girl in his local supermarket. She was attracted to him and knew he was to her as he tended to use her checkout when shopping there. Late one Saturday night they ran into each other at a newly opened Inner Harbor nightclub. They hit it off and partied into the early hours. They eventually ended up in Goldman's bed, and by dawn were sound asleep in each other's arms. Since that night they both enjoyed the fiery lovemaking that lay at the heart of their casual relationship.

'Belize, you haven't forgot about tomorrow night? You and your sister are still coming, right? My workmate Rod will be there.'

'Hey,' she chirped. 'I'm not some silly American girl. Of course I haven't forgotten. And Manuela's
definitely
coming.' She glared at her passing sister. 'Even if I have to drag her by the hair. She needs to get out of this goddamn house.'

Manuela eyeballed Belize and marched to her room, slamming the door on the conversation.

'I'm sure her and Rod will get on like ... how do you say it?'

'A house on fire?'

'
Si
, something like that.' Her accented voice lowered and she purred seductively. 'Listen, Scott, I just ran a hot bath and I'm shivering in the hallway with only a teeny towel about me, and I'm sure you don't want me catching a cold and losing my, ah,
energia
, huh? So, my lovable
hombre
, I'll see you tomorrow night, hmm? You know I can't wait.
Adios
, darling.' She made a long kissing sound and hung up.

Goldman listened absently to the dial tone before replacing the receiver. Hmm, he mused, short and sweet does it. He leaned back in the pillows and closed his eyes. He remembered Belize and the last time they made love. Rose and tan images of her writhing and naked came vividly to him as did the sound of her throaty laughter as they frollicked afterwards.

He liked her.

He found her effervescent personality a welcome change from the underlying conservatism of many east coast girls he'd met. Belize was the first woman he'd been involved with since the death of his wife Rachel. Of course Belize would never replace Rachel, nor would she dampen the memories of Rachel which sometimes overcame Goldman during times of solitude. No, he couldn't see another woman replacing Rachel anytime soon.

He reshuffled the printouts and looked up at his inched-open window as wind blanketed outside eaves. An eerie sound that always put him on edge. Shafts of light crept across his bedroom wall as a car pulled up outside. Its engine stopped. A car door slammed. Then another. Conscious of the illegal papers in his hands, he treaded across the carpeted floor to the window. He peered between the rattling slats of the Venetian blind as it curled inward from the night's gathering wind. A man and a woman huddled together as they ran across the rain-lashed street. He recognized them as neighbours. The woman's hair flapped against her squinting face as the couple unlocked their front door. Hardly a night to be out.

Goldman slid the window shut and dropped back on to his bed. He re-propped the pillows and continued reading the MK-ULTRA synopsis.

EIGHT

Michelle Eastman kicked back in her friend's Rosedale apartment. She was relieved to be off the road with its unending byways and strangers and to be around a familiar face. A face that had figured prominently in her life. Yes, she and Carmen went way back.

'Honestly Michelle, you would've loved it down there. It was fabulous.'

Fabulous, Michelle thought. The word was
so
Carmen.

Carmen Michaels-Costa tossed back a luxuriant mane of black hair and grabbed a delicate spoon from a carved wood box on the coffee table in front of her. The American-Salvadorian model was tall, tan and slim, and more often than not turned the heads of male and female alike, whether she was parading on the catwalk or strolling along the sidewalk. She'd learned long ago that her disarming beauty could make serious money and fast-track her into the good life, all the while bolstering her young woman cunning and ambition.

Michelle met her glamorous friend when both were sixteen and starry-eyed entrants in a Miss Boston beauty contest. Though only Carmen placed, an Alexis Models scout at the contest scheduled the two girls for a portfolio shoot. Michelle and Carmen struck up a friendship that grew alongside their burgeoning careers.

Working out of Alexis' New York and Paris offices, the rising young models became sought after; though Carmen more so. Michelle, less worldly than her Salvadorian friend, had more or less anchored herself to fashion photographer Terence Cruise; whereas Carmen, after a string of colourful liaisons, some of them picked up by celebrity tabloids, was presently engaged to Paulo Palmas, an up-and-coming Brazilian actor based in Rio.

'So you flew down to Mustique with Paulo Jr to see one of his friends?'

'Uh-huh, this cute guy named Dominique. They were old reservist buddies or something. Well after a day or two of lying round and generally soaking up the sun, this guy Dominique got the hots for me.'